Paper Birds
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: Because the school freaks have got to get together sometime, and troubled boys with bad families really ought to seek help from somewhere in the stupid, difficult world they live in. [stebbarkovitch, completed multichapter, tws for self-harm and parental abuse.]
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: help i've fallen for this ship and i can't get up.**

**Disclaimer: The Long Walk is not mine. Not in the least. **

Not one person knew Stebbins' first name.

Maybe they liked it better that way. Maybe it was easier for them to decide their feelings about him without knowing his first name. If he was just Stebbins, they wouldn't feel bad about pushing him against a locker or stealing his belongings.

At least that's the theory Stebbins had as he hit the ground with a thud, feeling papers flutter up around him like small, white birds with handwritten wings. This had happened almost immediately as he'd walked out of the library. He'd _known _that staying late had been a bad idea. They were getting quicker. He didn't even know who pushed him anymore. Rank? Abraham? It didn't matter to him.

He looked from boy to boy, not saying a word, trying to keep his face completely blank. "I'm sorry that you feel that way." With that, Stebbins began picking up his papers, stuffing them back into his binder. _The birds' wings are broken and folded now._

Just then, he felt someone pull at his backpack and realized that his copy of _Through the Looking Glass _was in the hands of the other boy. "Would you please give that back?" He said in the most reserved tone he could manage.

"What the fuck do you think?"

"My best guess would be no."

The boy, who he now noticed was Collie Parker, then began to slowly, almost painfully rip out the first page of the book. There was an audible rip and Stebbins winced. "Might I ask why you're defiling my book?" His voice rose slightly.

"What are you going to fucking do about it?" Parker then grabbed a fistful of the pages and ripped. The noise made Stebbins cringe. This was nothing new, but...it'd never happened like this before. It'd never been the books.

But Stebbins would not beg. Stebbins wouldn't cry. He would watch as Parker tore the volume apart like a hungry animal, and he would act like he didn't care. "Are you quite finished?"

"Nope." Parker ripped out the last chunk of pages and let them fall to the floor. If his homework had been birds, then the book pages were butterflies. Butterflies that had been twisted and defiled beyond belief, but butterflies, nonetheless. "There."

Parker then walked off without a word, leaving Stebbins alone with the pages. The hallway suddenly seemed very dark and very silent. Had everyone left already?

"What happened to you?"

The speaker sounded somewhat condescending, and Stebbins looked up. It was a small, dark boy whose body was shrouded in a black sweatshirt. Barkovitch, he thought. That was his name. He didn't seem to have any friends and yelled a lot.

"Nothing worth talking about." Stebbins picked up a couple of the pages of _Through The Looking Glass _and stuffed them in a pocket of his backpack.

Barkovitch surveyed the damage. "Damn. What'd you do to piss someone off?"

"I committed the scandalous offense of being born."

Barkovitch snorted. "That's all takes to piss people off sometimes."

Stebbins finally finished with the pages and brushed himself off. "Well, this was fairly pointless. Was there anything in particular you wanted to say to me?"

"Nah. I just, well, that happens to me a lot, too. I'm not going to fucking empathize with you, though."

Stebbins looked Barkovitch up and down. His expression seemed to be in a perpetual glare, and clearly said 'fuck off.'

"Well, then." He slung the straps of his backpack over his shoulders and began walking out of the building.

"Hey." Barkovitch's voice stopped him.

"What is it that you desire?"

"Man, you are really fucking weird. But I was just going to ask if you wanted me to walk you home or something, 'cause if people are stealing your books there's a pretty good chance you could get mugged or-"

Stebbins didn't let him finish. "Thank you. I accept your offer."

"I didn't even fucking finish.'

"I am aware of that."

Barkovitch sighed. This was undoubtedly the strangest kid he'd ever stumbled upon. Sure, school was full of batshit insane people, but no one like this guy. "Yeah, I'm sure you are. C'mon, let's go." Barkovitch started walking and Stebbins followed.

He had to notice the way the guy walked. He stepped gently, like he was afraid to step on some small animals, and he seemed to pick up his feet far more than most people, like he was doing some strange form of dance.

"Are you alright? You seem to be fixated on my feet." Stebbins smirked slightly, as though he found this particularly amusing.  
"You walk weirdly," was the best Barkovitch could come up with.

As they left the school building, Stebbins noticed that Barkovitch seemed to disappear into the dark. Perhaps that was an advantage of being small and intense-looking. "Where do you live?" Barkovitch tried to make the question sound as casual as he could.

"On the other side of town. You'll recognize my house."

"What, is your house some sort of town memorial?"

"No. But you'll recognize it."

Whatever the fuck that meant. He wasn't even going to try to interpret half the things Stebbins said. Barkovitch continued walking. "It appears that you were wrong. We seem to be the only ones out here."

"Which makes it even more likely that you'll get fucking robbed. How much farther is it to your house anyways?"

"As far as you would like it to be."

Barkovitch raised his eyebrows. "What the actual fuck."

"This walk lasts as long as you would like it to," Stebbins said cryptically. Who knew what went on inside that boy's head. He didn't even know himself.

"I'm getting really fucking cold, walk faster." Stebbins complied, and Barkovitch noted that he carefully stepped over the cracks in the sidewalk.

"What a lovely word you use, 'fucking.' Any particular reason for spouting it out all the time? Not that I have much of a problem with it."

"Good. And I just talk that way. Deal with it."

They walked in silence for awhile, Stebbins listening to the howling of the wind and Barkovitch looking around somewhat nervously. "We're nearly to my house, if you must know."

"Okay, good."

After a few minutes, Barkovitch realized what Stebbins had meant when he'd said that he'd recognize Stebbins' house. The house in front of them was the one that all of the boys in third grade had said contained a witch or an axe murderer. The garden hadn't been tended in what seemed like years, and the paint job was horrendous.

No lights were on inside, and in the dark it looked even creepier. "You live_ here?!"_

"Yes, I do." Stebbins shifted from foot to foot. This was his home, messy and old as it was. "Fitting, isn't it?"

"Yeah, actually, I was just about to say that." Barkovitch looked at his watch, which glowed a green color in the dark. "It's late. I should probably get going."

"Wait." Stebbins' face was illuminated by the streetlights, making him look like a ghost in mismatched clothing. "Thank you for devoting your time to this."

"You are really fucking weird."

"Goodbye to you too."

Barkovitch snorted. "See you."

"What makes you think you will?"

"It's called saying goodbye, dumbass. You've probably never heard of it in your freak world." With that last comment, Barkovitch began his promenade back down the street.

Stebbins watched his stretched shadow as it began to fade away down the sidewalk, and lightly walked into the scarcely tended garden of his house.

**I actually feel really good about this piece. What do you all think? **


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: I'm weirdly excited about updating this. This probably won't end up being much of a pairing chapter, but I hope it's enjoyable anyways.**

**Disclaimer: The Long Walk does not belong to me in any way, shape, or form.**

Stebbins took the liberty of watching Barkovitch leave until he was no longer visible, and then turned to walk into his house. A thorny bush caught on the hem of his pants, and he glared down at it, quickly disentangling himself from it.

His mother probably wasn't home, she was probably still at the restaurant. Damn, she worked long hours. Stebbins sighed and opened the door, it was unlocked as always.

The inside of his house was just as ghostly as the garden. Old photographs hung on the wall, completely undusted, and a lot of the furniture had plaster over it. He hung up his jacket and began making his way up the stairs, feeling each one creak under his feet. He really ought to tell his mother that their house needed fixing.

The stairs didn't creak when his father walked on them. They moaned and screamed as though they were being slowly tortured. Whenever his father came by, the whole house seemed to be on edge.

But he pushed that thought of his father from his mind and stepped off of the last stair. The upstairs floor carpeting was covered with dust, which seemed to rise in the air as he stepped across it.

His room was sparsely decorated, with nothing but a bed and a closet in it. Nothing on the walls. And the far wall was all a window, and contained a window seat that he called the dreaming seat, because he enjoyed sleeping on it far more than on his bed.

Stebbins sat down on his bed and looked contemplatively up at the ceiling, pulling his old, green sweater off of him. He always wore long sleeves at school and around his mother. No matter what weather. Always long sleeves.

The fabric rubbed against a fresh scar and he winced. Looking down at his bare arms through the pale fabric of his shirt, one wouldn't notice anything abnormal. But once you turned over his wrists...he had a...habit, that no one had been encouraging him to break.

He wasn't even sure why he did it anymore. It'd started as stress relief, and he guessed that that was how it had stayed. Something about releasing blood from his body really relaxed him, in a morbid way. He considered getting up and getting a razor at that moment, but...

"Dirk!"

The noise of his mother coming in startled Stebbins, and he quickly pulled on his sweater again. "Mother?" He made his way down the stairs as quickly as he could.

Stebbins' mother was a small, tired-looking woman whose caramel-colored hair was tied back in a bad ponytail and her clothes were always rumpled. "Sorry that I'm late."

"Oh, I only recently got home. I was nearly late."

"Stayed after school again?" His mother put her coat up on the hanger and sighed. "You should really find some friends to be with after school instead of just doing work."

Stebbins thought it would be best not to mention Barkovitch by name. He probably had a bit of a bad reputation. "Oh, someone walked me home. That should be close enough."

"Did you make a friend?" She still treated him like he was seven, despite that he was nine years the senior of seven.

"I don't think so."

"Did you get anything to eat?"

"No."

She gave him a smile that was obviously cracking around the edges. "I'll go make some dinner." She then began making her way through the house, turning on the lights. That was his mother, he thought. Always turning on the lights.

Stebbins sat down in one of the armchairs in the living room and stared off into space. His mother wanted him to make friends. Had he? No, he'd simply walked home with someone. There was a large difference between walking home with someone and being their friend.

He heard a loud sigh from the kitchen. "Dirky, you don't mind having soup again, do you?" She used her pet name for him, which almost sounded foreign to him. Hell, his own first name sounded foreign to him. He wasn't used to being Dirk. He was Stebbins. Stebbins the freak, Stebbins the loner. Not Dirk the waitress's son, Dirk whose father left him.

"Yes, Mother, I'm fine with that. You know I am."

"Dinner's on the table, then." Stebbins got up from the armchair and padded over to the dining room. The dining room looked as though it had been abandoned by one of the families in one of those dumb movies about rosy-cheeked children and magical governesses. The wallpaper was peeling and most of the plates on the table had been broken before and carelessly glued back together.

Stebbins shivered, remembering the last time his father had come around. There'd been a fight, and it had ended with broken plates and blood and crying. The memory of it made him seethe, it was cliché, but he felt responsible for his mother.

"Dirky, I don't think school's open after school tomorrow because there are conferences."

"Oh." He couldn't think of anything to say other than 'oh.' He could always just sit in a coffee shop for a bit, or sit alone in the house. "I could stay here."

His mother sighed. "See, Dirky...the thing is, I feel like I isolated you. You never hang out with any of the other boys or go to any parties or-"

Stebbins cut him off. "That's not a mandatory thing, Mother."

"Why do you always call me 'mother?' Why not 'mom?' Dirk, I don't want you to be isolated from everybody else for all of high school."

Stebbins narrowed his eyes. His mother had a habit of worrying too much. "I enjoy being isolated," he said in a reserved tone.

"You need to have friends. School's not open after school, why don't you go find a friend?"

"You're not suggesting that I spend time with _Barkovitch, _are you?" He was alright with walking home with the other boy, but actually spending time with him? He didn't think that either of them would be too open to that idea.

"Wasn't that the boy who got into a fight and put someone in the emergency room?" His mother looked quizzically at him.

"No idea," Stebbins mumbled, slightly embarrassed that his mother knew what fights went on at school.

"Are you friends with him?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps I should ask him." The thing that his mother kept forgetting was that Stebbins didn't know how to make friends. They didn't just spring up out of the ground like magic. You didn't grow them. Somehow they just happened, and Stebbins didn't know how to make that happen.

"Dirk, it doesn't work like that."

Stebbins decided to lie. Perhaps he could go wander around the city for a few hours after school and say he'd gone over to Barkovitch's house. "Fine. I'll ask him if he would like to exchange time after school."

Stebbins' mother sighed. Her son was odd. He spoke like a Lewis Carroll character and was somehow just as reserved. "Good." But Stebbins had already gone up to his room, somehow slipping away without a word.

He lay on his bed and took out his mangled copy of _Through the Looking Glass _and felt like he could cry. This book had been his since he was about five. It'd been his companion, whenever he felt like the world wanted nothing more than to lash out at him, he could always escape to the twisted world of Wonderland.

So before he went to bed, he placed the pages he'd recovered under his pillow. He knew it was dumb, but he wanted a bit of the book to stay with him. That book was like his friend. He didn't need Barkovitch, or any of the stupid, juvenile boys at school. He had his books, and he bit down hard on his lower lip to keep the tears from coming and convinced himself that he was content.

**I really liked giving Stebbins a backstory. This fanfic is really fun to update.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: that's it this is my favorite fanfic to update**

**Disclaimer: I think we've established that the Long Walk isn't mine.**

If there was one thing Gary Barkovitch hated more than anything in the world, it was getting up early.

He just didn't see the point in it. In fact, he often didn't see the point in waking up at all. What was the use of it, anyways? Sleeping was a hell of a lot more enjoyable than being awake.

But his parents had insisted that he get to school early. Apparently his grades were dropping, so somehow in their minds, getting their earlier would help solve the problem.

No, actually it wouldn't. It would just make him extremely cold and extremely pissed off.

The streets were completely empty, no one but the November wind made any noise. _November is a shitty month, _he thought. All about giving thanks to your family and shit, combined with the fact that the weather was always lousy.

Barkovitch looked down at his watch. Six-thirty in the morning. Just fucking great. School probably wasn't even open yet. He was going to sit down on the concrete steps, but then noticed that McVries and his fucking boyfriend were sitting there. Garraty, the dumb kid that had somehow ended up dating Scarface himself, had his head on his shoulder.

Barkovitch gave a disgusted sigh. Couples, along with early mornings, were one of his least favorite things.

McVries looked up. "Hey, killer." Somehow he'd ended up with that nickname on account of the fact that he had the personality of a pitbull, apparently.

"Shut the fuck up, Scarface."

Garraty appeared to have fallen asleep on McVries, and the contented look on his face made Barkovitch want to punch something. He wasn't sure what it was about couples, but everything about them made him angry.

"Watch your tone, killer. Ray's sleeping."

"I don't give a fuck."

"I know you don't. You don't give any fucks to anyone."

Barkovitch rolled his eyes, ignoring McVries' blatant insult. "When does school open?"

"Seven."

Barkovitch sat down as far from Garraty and McVries as he could on the stairs. A bleary-eyed Garraty woke up and looked around. Barkovitch unsuccessfully tried to tune out of their conversation.

"Hello there."

Barkovitch almost jumped, the voice had seemingly come out of nowhere. "Fucking Stebbins."

McVries turned around to face him, grinning. McVries took great pleasure in getting under Barkovitch's skin. "You're doing _what?"_

"Piss off, Scarface."

Stebbins was leaning against the railing, and Barkovitch couldn't help but think that he looked like a discarded rag doll, what with his lankiness and the fact that his clothes all had huges holes in them. "What do you want, freak?"

"Aren't I allowed to greet someone?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever you want."

McVries laughed, but Barkovitch really didn't see what was so hilarious. "If it is indeed whatever I want, then Barkovitch, may I ask a favor of you?"

Barkovitch was about to reply, but then one of the teachers swung the door open. "Early, are we?"

Garraty yawned and nodded, and he and McVries walked casually inside. Stebbins followed, leaving Barkovitch unable to answer. "You're going to slowly freeze to death if you stay out there," Stebbins said, poking his head out of the door and smirking.

Barkovitch sighed and followed. The transition from hot to cold left his skin with that irritating burning feeling and he was beginning to regret even getting up in the morning. Maybe he could have cut school today. That would have been great.

After a bit of standing there in the doorway like an idiot, Barkovitch noticed more and more people coming in. Collie Parker muttered something like, "Get out of the way, fuckass," but that might have just been his imagination.

Barkovitch certainly didn't feel like going to advisory. If one more person told him to try to be more open and optimistic, he just might pick up one of the sparsely distributed trash cans and throw them in frustration.

So, as an alternative, he just decided to wander the hallways for a bit. He could disappear into the crowd pretty easily, no one noticed the small, dark boy in a sweatshirt. After walking for a bit, he felt as though someone was watching the back of his neck, that little prickle that usually meant that someone was behind him.

"Fuck off." He didn't know who it was, but they probably would be driven away by that.

"How pleasant of you, dear Barkovitch."

He didn't even have to turn around to know that it was Stebbins. "Dammit, Stebbins. Could you leave me alone?"

"Was that rhetorical?"

Barkovitch sighed and broke into a run. Stebbins was certainly a creep, that was for sure. A creep that he really didn't want around him. Walking him home had been a one-time thing. It'd just been out of pity for the poor guy, sitting on the ground with his stupid book ripped up around him.

Eventually class started, and Barkovitch just went out of decency. His days had faded into monotonous schedules of go to class, avoid everybody, go to lunch, go to more classes, hope not to get beat up, go home. He knew that no one would break this schedule, that spending time with friends would never become part of this.

Not that he wanted friends. Friends were for fuckers like Scarface and his dumb boyfriend.

Class was as dull as always. He fell asleep during first period, and was only woken up by Collie Parker yelling that the professor had done an equation wrong. Fucking Parker.

By the time he got to lunch, he'd gotten pushed twice and reprimanded by angry teachers three times. His hip was throbbing from being pushed against a locker, but that didn't stop him from spewing out "Fuck off!" to the offender.  
He was now glaring down at the sludge that the cafeteria apparently called food, and as usual going to sit by himself.

"Well, Barkovitch, I never did get to tell you what favor I wanted from you."

"What the fuck do you want? Or, as you might put it, _what is it that you desire?"_

That was meant to be a taunt, but somehow it made Stebbins smile slightly. Barkovitch added that to a mental list of reasons why he disliked Stebbins. He smiled at all the wrong times. "Well, my mother has requested that I make some friends."

"I don't like the direction this is going in."

"And since school is closed tonight, may I come to your house? Not as a friend, just to keep my mother from thinking that I am a complete pariah."

_Who the hell uses the word pariah? _"Why would I let you in my house?"

"I'm not some sort of small animal vermin."

"Oh, fucking fine. If that's what your goddamn mother wants."

"Thank you." Stebbins sat down at the table with Barkovitch and began to unwrap his jelly sandwich. Barkovitch didn't ask whether he was going to leave, partially because he was afraid of getting some cryptic response, and partially because he sort of liked just having the other boy around to show that he had some sort of friend.

Actually, that was dumb. Friends make you a target.

Stebbins didn't speak a word for the rest of lunch, and didn't say a word to Barkovitch throughout the rest of the day. They didn't have any classes together, so he guessed that that was logical, but still. He'd been making weird requests and sitting with him, he should at least talk to him.

Then Stebbins appeared next to him on his way out. "Hello."

"No one says that. 'Hey' usually does just fine."

"Do I seem as though I care?"

"No."

Stebbins had a habit of tuning out of conversations for no discernable reason, or at least that was what Barkovitch thought. Maybe he just liked silence or something.

A couple was making out on a park bench and Stebbins seemed to watch them for a few minutes. What a weird guy.  
In order to get to Barkovitch's house, he had to pass Stebbins'. It was weird, how he'd never known that that was a house that someone actually lived in. It had always looked abandoned to him.

Stebbins seemed fixated on the sky as they passed his house, like he didn't want to look at it. "Hey, uh, Stebbins? Why's there a Jeep in front of your house?"

"Hmm?" Then Stebbins realized what had just been said and turned pale. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"What?"

"I'm sorry to cut this short, but I really must depart." Stebbins then appeared to race into his house, looking as though he was late for his own funeral.

Word on the street was that Stebbins was a freak, and for once, Barkovitch thought, word on the street was right.

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**wow stebbins what a nice direction your life is going**

**it would be a shame if something**

**happened to it**


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: this chapter turned out longer than it was supposed to be but oh well**

**Disclaimer: The Long Walk is not mine.**

Barkovitch decided that he ought to follow Stebbins.

Not that he was _worried _about the freak. He was just curious. Yeah, that was right, just curious as to why the fuck there was a tan Jeep in front of Stebbins' beat-up house. He positioned himself by one of the semi-broken windows and hoped that he got some sort of show.

As Stebbins burst inside, he panted slightly and tried his best to look as though it was any other day and he'd just gotten home from school. "Mother?"

"Dirk." A voice he knew all too well. No, no _no. _Not now. He was doing well, as well as a boy like him could do in life, it seemed.

"F-father." A stutter rose in his throat, and somehow he wasn't able to stop it. Maybe it was that goddamn word. Father. It didn't sound right. "W-where's Mother?"

"In the kitchen."

Stebbins' father was a tall man in army uniform, mirrored sunglasses shading his eyes. His skin was tanned from whatever it was he did in the army. But whatever it was he did, it made him famous. Made him feared.

Stebbins didn't even know his name. And he didn't think he wanted to. He would much rather that his father stay out of his life.

"Oh. Well..." Stebbins was about to make an excuse but it caught on his fear before he could get it out of his mouth. He started to move towards the door, maybe he could just leave and no one would care?

"Dirk. You are staying right here." His father had a certain commandeering quality to his voice and that sent shivers down Stebbins' spine.

"W-why are you here?"

"Don't question me, Dirk."

Just then, his mother came out of the kitchen. She was forcing a smile. "Dirk, I thought you were staying over at your friend's..."

"He doesn't have friends," his father said gruffly. As rude as that was, it was true.

"He does. Right, Dirk?"

"No, I don't. The Major is right." He thought it appropriate to use his father's army title. Suited him.

From the window, Barkovitch could see the silhouettes of Stebbins and his family. His father looked like a mean guy, and his mother a delicate little flower. And then there was Stebbins, lanky and slightly underweight, caught between his two parents.

The father said something that upset the mother, and she began yelling an accusation. Stebbins didn't attempt to stop anything.

"You've isolated him! Look at how he is now!" Stebbins' mother's brown eyes were blown wide with protective anger.

"No, he's isolated himself. Tell me, Dirk, what do you enjoy doing?"

Stebbins considered lying, he was a master at lying, but his mother would hate him forever. After all, to thine own self be true. "I enjoy reading and being left alone." His tone remained a reserved, emotionless one. The voice of a debater staying neutral, just to win that round.

"See, his isolation is completely his own fault. I wanted a son, not this bony streak of nothing."

Stebbins stifled a laugh. That was a rather interesting description. He supposed that it was accurate, though. He was skinny and fairly worthless, so...

"That 'bony streak of nothing' is your son!"

"One of many."

"Why are you even here?!" Stebbins had a strong urge to tell his mother to shut up and let his father finish and then he'd be gone soon enough. Just wait it out.

"I visit my children." The Major's voice was as lacking of emotion as Stebbins' had been. Maybe that was where he got it from. He hated to think that he'd inherited anything from this man.

"May I go upstairs, if you're simply going to argue?"

"What do you need to add to that?" The Major glared down at him and Stebbins remembered how he liked to be referred to.

"May I go upstairs, sir?" Stebbins said meekly. He let a slight tremor go through him, to give the appearance that he was afraid and probably should leave. And it wasn't a complete lie. He was afraid. But he certainly wouldn't be so obvious about it.

"Fine." Stebbins scampered up the stairs, eager to get away from his bickering parents. He passed the bathroom, and this time he didn't resist the urge it gave him. What was a little blood loss, anyways? His parents wouldn't care.

Rolling up his sleeves had been difficult at first. It'd been hard to look at the marred, slightly bruised wrists and the pale skin, but it'd gotten easier to see. It was his skin. Yes, it was scarred and bruised, but it was his skin and it probably wasn't going to get any better.

He stayed small, just making a small cut. The skin around it became puffy and it didn't bleed too much, but somehow it was comforting to know that he could bleed. He was human. Just like everyone else. He didn't see how everyone else didn't seem to realize that.

His skin seemed to be begging for more, but he put the razor back and shoved the sleeves of his sweater down. He would stop sometime, right? Maybe when things all got better, he'd stop.

The skin stung where he'd cut, but it would go away after awhile. He made his way into his room and sat down on the window seat, looking out at the mostly silent, slowly darkening town. He loved dusk, when the sky looked like someone had been dusting and grey mixed with a somewhat sickly orange.

From down below, Barkovitch decided that it was time to get home and started around the back of the house.  
His eyes scanned the windows of the decrepit house, and he noticed what might have been the pale shape of Stebbins sitting near one of the windows. He didn't appear to see the boy below, and then Barkovitch did something really dumb.

He grabbed a pebble from the ground and threw it at Stebbins' window.

Stebbins opened the window. From what Barkovitch could see, he looked even more rag doll-like and Barkovitch couldn't help but thinking that he looked like the perfect occupant for the house. He was just like the house.

"Barkovitch?" Stebbins hissed, leaning out of the open window.

"Uh, hey."

"What are you doing here?" Stebbins couldn't think of something cryptic to say, and that deeply frustrated him. He wanted to scare Barkovitch away, he didn't need the dark-haired, swearing boy to complicate things even further.

"No fucking idea. I was just going home."

Stebbins tried to judge the distance from the window to the ground. His house wasn't that high, was it? He slowly put one foot out of the window and felt the lack of ground beneath it. That was an interesting feeling to have beneath one's feet. Knowing that there's absolutely nothing below.

Then Stebbins pulled another foot over, thankful that there was no screen on his window, and slid off.

He landed in a heap on the grass, his arm burning and his legs probably bruised. "What the fuck did you do that for?"

Stebbins said through gritted teeth, "I wanted to be able to converse easier." He pulled himself up, wincing. "How long have you been here?"

"Your dad is an asshole."

"I am aware of that." It suddenly hit Stebbins that that meant Barkovitch had seen their whole conversation. He wasn't sure what to think about that, it could go one of two ways.

"Like, a really fucking big asshole."

"I know." Stebbins then realized that he would have to go back around the house to get back inside. "Shit."

"What?"

"It appears that I will have to go around the house to get back in."

Barkovitch looked around, as though wondering whether anyone was watching. He almost felt bad for Stebbins, that is, if he was capable of feeling bad for anybody. "Hey, uh, Stebbins?"

"Yeah?"

"If things get really bad at your place, you can come stay the night at mine or something." He immediately regretted saying that. It sounded like something out of a bad movie.

"May I do so tonight?" Stebbins said it so politely that it seemed like he was asking Barkovitch to dance or something of the like.

"Sure, whatever the fuck you want." Barkovitch then started walking away, trying to hide his embarrassed expression. Stebbins followed, walking in that strange way that Barkovitch had noticed earlier, where he seemed afraid to step on some small animal.

Stebbins started regretting his decision after taking the first step away from his house, but somehow he went on with it anyways.

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**.**

**the next chapter will be filled with shippy goodness i promise.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: i don't have school today so what better to do than update fanfiction**

**Disclaimer: None of the characters here are mine.**

Stebbins didn't know what he was expecting Barkovitch's house to look like, but it was certainly more ordinary than he would have thought. It was just like every other house on the block, with white slats and the same number of windows on either side.

He wasn't going to try to find symbolism of their personalities in their houses. He was awfully sick of symbolism. Stebbins was the type of person who much preferred to read books just for the things in them and not for the possible deeper meaning behind them.

Barkovitch threw the door open, apparently it was unlocked, and yelled, "I'm home!"

There was no response. "Mom probably just nodded. She doesn't even know I fucking exist." He didn't seem to be directing that at Stebbins, more just an angry rant towards the air.

"I would think that that would be better than having a parent who does notice you at times."

Barkovitch realized the reason he'd brought Stebbins here and it set upon him that he had probably just been insensitive. Oh well. He did that all the time. "I guess."

"D'you have any homework?" Barkovitch's attempt to take away the awkwardness of the situation failed miserably.

"Of course I do. Imagine, a life without homework. It would be a pure and beautiful thing."

Barkovitch nodded. Stebbins had an interesting way of putting his complaints about school. Most people he knew would just say 'man, school fucking sucks.' Why did the damn freak have to sound like he came out of one of the very novels they were made to read? "Yeah. Totally."

They made their way up the stairs and into Barkovitch's bedroom, which was even more sparsely decorated than Stebbins' own, although it was a great deal cleaner and lighter in coloration.

Barkovitch sighed and threw his backpack down. "Who fucking cares if I don't do my homework? It's not going to matter in the long run."

"The real question is whether you have anything better to do," Stebbins mused while taking out the contents of his bag.

"Who the fuck starts their homework right when they get home?"

"I have nothing more important to do, do I?" Stebbins flashed him a charming smile and began taking out various things from his bag. He was like a sea otter cracking open shells and laying them out on its stomach, there seemed to be a certain peaceful order to the way Stebbins was arranging his materials.

"Maybe, I don't know..." He was about to say 'talk to me' but then he realized that that was not something he wanted at all.

The door of Barkovitch's room opened. The woman in the doorframe appeared to be his mother. "Oh, Gary, you brought someone home."

"Yeah," Barkovitch said, turning slightly red at the delighted expression on his mother's face.

Stebbins got up, looking almost too polite. It was like one of the kids from those etiquette books had overdosed on drugs and was now too polite. "Hello."

Barkovitch's mother seemed to be waiting for Barkovitch to introduce what she thought was a new friend, but none came. "Oh, well, I'll leave you two to study."

After his mother left, Barkovitch glared down at the ground. "I told you she doesn't care."

"She seems to care enough," Stebbins observed, jotting something down on his homework. Barkovitch noticed that it was some sort of complicated math problem. He'd always hated math. Hell, he hated every subject in school. He often wondered why he didn't just drop out.

Stebbins pretended to be completely focused on his homework, but every so often he would look up at Barkovitch, who'd climbed up onto his bed and was staring off into space. Barkovitch was an asshole. But Barkovitch had just let him come into his house at six PM at a moment's notice just because of his father.

That wasn't a very asshole thing to do. "You aren't as much of a dick as you take yourself to be," Stebbins said to himself.  
"What?" Barkovitch appeared not to have heard.

"Nothing." Stebbins smiled down at his homework. "Do you want help with your homework?"

"Like I said, I'm not fucking doing it."

"Some of it's just reading. That's not hard." Stebbins finished one page of math, thank god that that was all he had in that subject.

"Fine." Barkovitch fished around in his bag for his copy of _The Catcher in the Rye._

"I feel as though you'd like Holden. You're a bit alike." Stebbins crawled up onto the bed with his copy and sat down next to Barkovitch.

"I fucking hate that character and his whole stupid book."

"Often those you hate are those that you're most like."

"You should have your own fucking book of quotes," Barkovitch muttered and started scanning the pages. Stebbins didn't say anything, just read quietly next to him, occasionally his lips twitching into a smile at something in the book.

"Caulfield is such a damn whiner," Barkovitch finally said after finishing the chapter.

"Well, as I said, the characters you hate the most often most resemble you."

"What the fuck did you just say about me?!"

Stebbins laughed and Barkovitch considered hitting him. He gracefully stepped off of the bed and onto the ground to finish whatever schoolwork he had left. It was beyond Barkovitch why Stebbins studied so much. Maybe one way to deal with having no friends was to do lots and lots of schoolwork.

Eventually, Stebbins finished his load of schoolwork. What confused Stebbins was the fact that Barkovitch didn't appear to be doing anything. He just sat there, glaring off into space. He'd spent almost four hours of the evening doing absolutely nothing but sulking.

"Where may I sleep?" Stebbins suddenly asked.

Barkovitch grabbed a blanket and pillow from his bed and tossed them onto the floor. "That'll work. The carpeting's comfortable enough." He was going to add an apology, but then he realized that he wasn't sorry. This had been a terrible decision on his part. He should've just left Stebbins with his damn father.

He went over to turn out the light and Stebbins crawled over to the makeshift bed on the ground. Barkovitch laid down and could hear Stebbins trying to get comfortable on the floor. Oh well. Sucks for him.

Barkovitch slept soundly and dreamlessly, which was pretty unusual for him. What woke him up was the light. He'd neglected to close the blinds and sunlight was glaring into his eyes at five in the morning.

He was surprised to roll over and find his knee connecting with a body next to him. He suddenly became very aware that there were arms wrapped around him and it was like realizing that he had just stepped into a steel trap.

He looked down and saw Stebbins, still fast asleep. What the fuck was the asshole doing in his _bed?_

There were so many things wrong here. Okay, firstly they were both guys, second they were both shirtless, and third, he didn't even know Stebbins that well. Why the actual fuck was the other boy _sleeping with him?!_

He couldn't get out of Stebbins' grasp, and also some part of him didn't want to wake the stupid freak boy up. He liked him better when he was asleep. There were no cryptic quotes coming out of his mouth now.

He ended up laying there for about another hour, Stebbins still sleeping like a baby. He shifted around several times, attempting to get out of Stebbins' arms. The blonde was surprisingly strong.

At roughly seven, his mother opened his door. Barkovitch almost screamed.

"Gary it's almost-oh."

"This isn't what it looks like," Barkovitch said through gritted teeth. He had had enough and kicked Stebbins in the shin.  
The smaller boy's pupils were blown wide in the confusion of being painfully woken up. He immediately crossed his arms over his chest and appeared to panic. "What time is it?" He then noticed Barkovitch's mother. "Oh, hello."

She looked from Barkovitch to Stebbins and then wordlessly closed the door. Stebbins was already scrambling to put on his shirt and ugly sweater.

"I don't remember ever getting out of bed," Stebbins said pleasantly. "But I'm glad I did."

"Fuck you."

"You almost did."

"You are one weird fucker, Stebbins." Barkovitch had thought he would regret the decision of helping Stebbins out, and he'd been right.

"Oh, I know, Barkovitch. I know."

**i promised that this would be a shippy chapter didn't i well i hope i satisfied your shipping needs**


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note: I'm sorry for not updating in awhile uwu I sort of forgot about it.**

**Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.**

Stebbins considered leaving right away and just walking away. He wondered if his mother was worrying about him at home, or if his father had left yet.

Barkovitch was glaring down at him from on top of the bed and Stebbins was honestly surprised that he hadn't told him to get the fuck out of the house yet. It seemed like a perfectly logical thing to do, he thought. Seeing as they weren't best friends or anything.

"Gary, uh, friend of Gary, you slept a bit late. You should probably be going." Barkovitch's mother came in, trying to look as welcoming as she could.

"He's not my friend," Barkovitch muttered.

"Oh, are you-"

"Fuck, no!" Barkovitch practically screeched. His cheeks had turned a dark red color.

"Language. Well, whatever he is, both of you should get some breakfast and get to school."

Barkovitch scowled at his mother and made a point of storming out of the room. Stebbins shrugged at Barkovitch's mother and followed him out of the door.

Barkovitch had grabbed an apple and was eating it messily. He was already halfway out the door, despite the fact that his hair was uncombed and he was still eating. "Shouldn't you finish eating?"

"Who the fuck cares."

Stebbins smiled at the dark-haired boy. "Aren't you in a charming mood today?"

"Fuck off." Barkovitch went out and slammed the door.

His blonde companion followed him out the door and closed it in a considerably calmer way. He fell into step beside him, still wearing that charming, _annoying _smile. "So, Barkovitch, if you never do your homework, then how do you get through classes?"

"Pearson from my advisoyr is smart and I have money," Barkovitch said between bites of apple.

"Cheating off someone else? Really, I would have expected better from you." Stebbins' tone was dripping with obvious sarcasm.

"Well, don't. You aren't getting anything better from me," Barkovitch growled, quickening his pace so as to get ahead of Stebbins, who caught up quickly enough.

"Oh, really, Barkovitch, why are you trying to get away from me?" Stebbins grabbed onto the other boy's arm, causing him to stumble forward.

"What was that for, you fucktard?!"

"I'm making sure I don't lose you."

"Well, get lost." Barkovitch attempted to wriggle his arm out of the other's grip. Stebbins looked like all his clothes were too big for him, he had a scarf draped around his shoulders that he hadn't noticed last night, and the scarf practically looked like a shawl. That must have meant he was pretty fucking skinny, so how was he so goddamn strong?!

"Get lost with me."

"What are you implying? I'm not even fucking sure anymore."

"As I've said many times, my words are up for interpretation." Stebbins smiled charmingly and Barkovitch gave a loud, exasperated sigh and gave up on trying to get Stebbins to let go or go away.

They walked in somewhat uncomfortable silence for awhile, Stebbins humming softly to himself. It'd come to the point where he himself didn't even quite understand what the things he said meant any more than Barkovitch. He was...happy. He knew that. Beneath his prickly, angry exterior, Barkovitch was a good guy. He'd let Stebbins sleep in his house on a moment's notice just because of the suggestion of danger, and Stebbins hadn't even had to ask.

Stebbins had to notice the fact that Barkovitch wasn't unattractive in the least. It was just a thing that people noticed, right? You judge people you don't even know as attractive or unattractive. It didn't mean anything that he was studying the bone structure of Barkovitch's face and the way his mouth twitched up into a smirk at some thought he'd had.

He was nice-looking. That was all. What with his olive skin and angry dark eyes. He was attractive in a very angry way. This was fairly normal for Stebbins, actually. He liked to pay attention to the details of a person, and that was perhaps why he had so few friends.

It wasn't as though he was in love with Barkovitch. They hadn't known each other for long. He just liked the company of another human being. _Human beings, naturally, are pack animals, right?_

"Why do you keep looking at me like that?" Barkovitch said, scowling.

"Like what?"

"Like I'm sort of fucking bug under a microscope. It gives me the creeps."

"I apologize."

"You know, I don't really want to be seen with you in public. No offense or anything..." Barkovitch paused. "But you probably make me even more of a goddamn target than I already am."

Stebbins took a moment to consider this. Both of them were targets, really. In a metaphorical sense, if two targets were put together, then perhaps they could deflect arrows? "But can't targets stick together?" Stebbins looked quizzically at him, trying to hide the fact that he was somewhat hurt.

"No." Barkovitch realized they were approaching the school. "Listen, you little shit. Our friendship, if you can call it that, ends now. I was too nice to you. Go read a book by yourself or something." Stebbins was about to grab him and pull him back, but Barkovitch bolted for the door, leaving Stebbins alone on the sidewalk in the cold November air.

Barkovitch slammed the door behind him, perhaps just for effect, and stormed down the hallway to his locker. He made a point of not looking at anything other than the ground, perhaps out of embarrassment.

That wasn't a bad thing he had done, was it? He was protecting Stebbins, in a way. Hanging around people like him made you immediately a reject. And it was the same vice versa. Stebbins was the weird kid, the one who would probably end up in an asylum by the time he was twenty. Barkovitch was the antisocial one who'd never get married and end up as an accountant.

It was better to have no friends at all than one that would make you even more of a target. After all, he'd gotten on just fine without friends since he was five. The only person he could've even considered a friend was a boy named Hamish who'd hung out with him twice when he was seven.

_Wow, that is pretty fucking sad. _Barkovitch pushed his locker shut, making it give off a loud, metallic sound.

"Barkovitch?"

"Fuck off."

"Care to walk to advisory with me, Barkovitch?" He was almost completely convinced that it was some slightly confused girl who was afraid of getting beaten up. He turned around to see Stebbins leaning against his locker, smiling in that dumb, condescending way.

"I told you, I'm not going anywhere with you." He started down the hallway, but Stebbins jogged after him, smiling all the while. "Please fuck off, Stebbins."

"I'm sorry, but no."

"Why?"

"Because I'm returning a favor you did for me."

"What?" Barkovitch glanced irritably back at him.

"You need someone, Barkovitch. You won't admit it, but you let me stay the night because you wanted, for once, for somebody to voluntarily be with you. All of your whole, sick life, all you've really wanted is friends. And you don't know how best to make them, so you pretend you don't want them."

Barkovitch grabbed Stebbins by the stupid, purple scarf that was around his neck and slammed him against the wall. "You shut your fucking mouth, freak!"

Stebbins' voice was breathless and hoarse from the impact, but his face twisted into a smirk. "You don't want to admit that I'm right, do you?"

Barkovitch's face was so close to Stebbins' that he could feel Barkovitch's breath on his skin. "Alright, listen up. You and I aren't friends. Fuck, we aren't even companions or anything. _Leave. Me. Alone."_

Barkovitch dropped Stebbins, and then realized that he was holding part of Stebbins' scarf in his hand. He'd ripped it. The two boys stared at each other for a few minutes. Stebbins glared up at him, then brushed himself off and promptly got up. He took a look at his ruined scarf, then flashed Barkovitch a smile and walked off.

What the fuck was wrong with that boy, Barkovitch thought. He could hear his voice in his head, repeating that sentence about his whole, sick, friendless life. Maybe Stebbins was right. Maybe the reason he'd hated what he said was because he was right.

No, that was wrong. He was Gary Barkovitch and he didn't need anyone.

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**ah, I enjoyed writing this chapter.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note: i should be doing my homework but instead i wrote this. lucky for you. or not.**

**Disclaimer: Nothing is mine except for the dumb plot.**

* * *

Stebbins sat through advisory with minimal trouble. He had no interest in listening to his peers talk about their personal lives or do their forgotten homework of last night, and especially not today.

He was angry about his scarf, that was sure. That thing had cost about thirty dollars, and he'd bought it with saved money. So, naturally, he'd be upset that Barkovitch had just ripped it in two. Perhaps there was some symbolism in the fact that Barkovitch had just ripped one of his favorite possessions in half.

Meanwhile, Barkovitch had sat down in his first class early. It was just him, alone in a room with a bunch of empty desks. There was something so unnerving about empty desks. He wasn't sure what it was, it was just...it felt as though everybody had left him.

He almost laughed at himself for having such a stupid fear. Why should he care if everybody leaves? "I'm better off alone."  
He could practically hear Stebbins' smug voice in his head. _Maybe if you say it enough times, you'll believe it. What a laugh._  
Ah, shit, was he losing his mind now?_ If this is what making friends is like, I sure as fuck don't want it. Or maybe it's the freak. That fucking freak's just messing with my head._

It was those goddamn empty desks. And the dark room. That's all. Barkovitch took a deep breath and tried to focus on something other than the stupid room with its stupid desks and its stupid lack of light.

As if to save him, a teacher then entered, flipping on the light switch. Barkovitch breathed a sigh of relief and said an unimportant hello to the teacher. He didn't even know whether he'd been greeted or not, it just seemed polite. Fuck politeness. Barkovitch didn't even care about school anyways.

Classes were a blur. It was just the norm, the dull monotony of learning. Or at least, having useless information shoved in his face and calling it learning.

By lunch, Barkovitch had nearly forgotten about Stebbins. He'd just avoid him, that'd work. They'd just go on living and never speak to each other again, and Barkovitch would continue being a loner and Stebbins would continue being a freak. That was just how things worked.

Barkovitch spent most of his way to lunch looking down, which usually kept away most people. A rough shove quickly brought back to reality as he found his face connecting with the ground. "What the fuck was that!"

Collie Parker glared down at him. "Just doin' what you deserve. You've been walking around with that freak Stebbins, haven't you? Yeah, I suppose I expected as much."

"Fuck you."

"Right back at ya." Parker kicked Barkovitch's side, causing him to wince. Usually, people would question how this could happen in the middle of a hallway, but the school had gotten used to things like this. There was violence, and there wasn't a lot anybody could do about it.

Barkovitch could feel his knife in the pocket of his jeans, and was going to reach for it when there was a loud _uff! _sound from Parker. He looked up, and the sight before him was almost comical.

Stebbins had tackled Parker, the poor weirdo didn't have any idea how to fight, and Parker had started calling Stebbins some rather creative curse words. "What the fuck, Stebbins?! That's..." He didn't bother to finish, since Parker finally got out of Stebbins' headlock and kicked him in the shins, sending him keeling over.

Stebbins didn't cry out, and Parker just looked down at him. "Alright, fucker, it's sorta sweet that you wanted to look out for your little friend, but you're literally the worst fucking fighter I've ever seen."

Stebbins appeared to have lost his breath, and was just panting loudly. Parker rolled his eyes and started to walk away.  
Barkovitch got up, despite the fact that one of his legs throbbed a bit from being kicked, and walked over to Stebbins. "What the...you fucking idiot! You could've gotten both your legs broken or something! That's Collie fucking Parker!"

Stebbins still seemed to be out of breath, either that or he was just choosing to be silent. After a few minutes of tense silence between the two, he finally opened his mouth to speak. "I felt that I hadn't fully repaid you."

Barkovitch knelt down and rolled up the leg of Stebbins'-really oddly colored, he had to notice. Who the fuck wears purple pants-pants. A large spot of purple-ish black formed a bruise right below his knee. "Fuck. You were still thinking about that goddamn favor?! That's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard! You..." He trailed off. "I'll try and find some ice. C'mon, can you walk?"

"I suppose so." Barkovitch grabbed the blonde boy's arm and saw him wince.

Just then he had an idea."Hang on, hold still." Stebbins did as he was told and Barkovitch attempted to pick him up. Jesus fucking Christ, how had he ever thought that this was a good idea? Stebbins was light, but still. It probably looked pretty dumb. The guy had taken a pretty bad beating, though, and despite that he was a huge fucking idiot, Barkovitch felt sort of bad.

"You don't need to do this. I can walk, Barkovitch." Barkovitch grunted and Stebbins decided not to question it.

By the time they'd made it to the nurse's office, the amount of weird looks they'd gotten wasn't a number either of them could count, and Barkovitch felt his face reddening. Fuck, this had definitely been a bad idea. He set Stebbins down and went in to go get some ice.

The nurse was a fairly skinny woman who probably didn't have any sort of medical degree. "Do you have any ice? My...uh..." Shit. What do you call it when you're just not friends? He swallowed hard. "Friend. My friend has a pretty big bruise."

"Sure." She smiled at him and after going back into a smaller room came out with some ice. Barkovitch sighed and went back to Stebbins.

"Here's your fucking ice, freak." He leaned down and rolled up Stebbins' pant leg, pressing it against his bruised knee.

"I can do that myself, you know." Stebbins sounded slightly amused. Barkovitch turned red again. He heard someone, he suspected it was Davidson, passing by snicker at them. Shit, this probably looked pretty weird, seeing as his face was pretty close to Stebbins' crotch. He mentally cursed himself for even thinking about that.

"We're not friends," Barkovitch suddenly blurted out.

"What is this, then? Partnership?"

"Sure. Not friendship, though." Barkovitch tried very hard to just look down at the ice he was holding and not at the boy he was talking to.

"You carried me here and now you're trying to ease the pain in my leg with your own hands," Stebbins said drily.

"Shut the fuck up."

"Make me."

"Why do you always say that after I tell you to shut up?"

"It seems that you know my little speaking patterns, too." Stebbins laughed lightly and Barkovitch felt like crawling into a hole and never coming out. He was...embarrassed...by this idea that he could feel at least tolerable around someone.

"Well, I..."

"Oh, you haven't got an excuse."

Barkovitch got up. "I want lunch. I'm fucking starving. Ice your own damn leg." Stebbins followed, pressing the ice against his leg as he walked. He wondered if Barkovitch knew that he was smiling.

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**(cue the my little pony: friendship is magic theme) **


	8. Chapter 8

**disclaimer: [skrillex begins playing] you know that i don't own the long walk i shouldn't have to say this.**

Stebbins had thought that walking home would be the hardest part of the way, and he was right. As he left the building, following Barkovitch, he wondered if the dark boy had gotten used to his presence.

Barkovitch had his headphones in and was completely ignoring him. This had to be changed. Stebbins hopped up onto a bench lining the sidewalk and began hopping from bench to bench. He hadn't done this since he was about seven, and somehow this made him laugh to himself.

Barkovitch looked up irritatedly. "What the fuck are you even doing?"

"Jumping on the benches."

"That's something that little kids do."

"So?" Stebbins smiled and hopped from the bench onto Barkovitch, practically tackling him. He was light enough that he was merely hanging onto Barkovitch's back.

"What the actual fuck are you doing?! Get off me!" Stebbins clambered up onto Barkovitch's shoulders, making the other boy give an exasperated sigh. "I'm short. If you're trying to get my attention, you're just going to break my back."

Stebbins giggled, suddenly feeling incredibly silly. He was like a third grader with a crush. Was that it? Did he have a crush on Barkovitch? The stupid boy had only helped him out without asking anything and walked him home in order to protect him. That's how they'd met. How do...crushes...feel?

"I mean it, get the fuck off my shoulders. I'm going to get premature arthritis because of this."

"Arthritis is in your legs, Barkovitch. Not your shoulders."

"Fine, ok, now shut the fuck up." They must have looked extremely odd, Stebbins sitting on Barkovitch's shoulders like a child and Barkovitch grumbling all the way. "You going back to your house? Because I'm sure as hell not letting you back in mine."

This made Stebbins pale and lose his giddy attitude. "I..."

Barkovitch said through what seemed to be gritted teeth, "C'mon. You'll be fine. He can't be that bad." The words sounded uncharacteristic on Barkovitch's lips.

"No, it won't be," Stebbins said, resting his chin on top of Barkovitch's head. "My father is a terrible human being, Barkovitch."

Barkovitch knelt down. "You'll be fine, now get the fuck off my shoulders before I get you off by force."

Stebbins laughed and climbed off of Barkovitch. "Could you come with me?"

"Where?"

"Home."

Barkovitch blinked. There was something really annoying about the way Stebbins was standing in front of him with wide eyes and a somewhat terrified expression. But at the same time, it was sort of sad. "Fine. But I'll just walk you upstairs and then leave, okay?"

"Fine." Stebbins tried to pull his face into a smile, but couldn't quite manage it.

By the time they'd gotten to Stebbins' house, Barkovitch was beginning to regret his decision. He'd found that Stebbins was practically clinging to his arm. At least he hadn't been going on and on about some stupid book or something.

Stebbins let go of Barkovitch and knocked on the door fearfully. "Dirk! Dirk, where did you go last night?" A small woman who he assumed was Stebbins' mother hugged him.

"I was afraid," Stebbins said softly.

"Oh, Dirk...well, your father's still here. Who's that behind you?"

"Gary Barkovitch," Barkovitch muttered.

"What?"

"Gary Barkovitch," Barkovitch said more loudly, looking at the woman. She looked...tired. Like she'd spent too long trying to appear as though she wasn't tired and it had the opposite effect.

"Oh, hello! Are you Dirky's friend?"

Barkovitch resisted the urge to snicker, and then realized what question had just been posed. Friend. No, no, they weren't friends. Friends do...what do friends do? What constituted friends? "Yeah," he said, swallowing hard.

There was a loud yell from inside the house and Stebbins turned pale. "Oh, well, come in!" Stebbins' mother smiled awkwardly and rushed inside. Stebbins scampered up the stairs the moment he went inside. Barkovitch followed, noticing that the stairs creaked under his feet. God, this house was old as fuck.

Stebbins' room was dark, Barkovitch didn't even see a light switch. "Is there even a fucking light switch?"

"Lamps," Stebbins said. "I don't like them all that much, though. My room is better when it's dark."

"That is really fucking weird,_ Dirky."_

Stebbins blushed. "I just enjoy having no lights, alright? It's calmer, really. Light can blind you if you look at them for too long. No one's ever gone blind from being in the dark."

"Yeah, well, it's a hell of a lot like being blind."

"Don't look at it like that." Stebbins set down his bag. "Look at it as just not being able to see for a bit. It's calming, to not have to look at things."

Another yell resounded from downstairs and Barkovitch looked around uncomfortably. "I should go."

"No. Stay." Stebbins grabbed onto his arm.

"My parents are going to worry. I've got homework."

"You never do your homework."

"I can start now. Let me go, freak." Stebbins noticed that the term had stopped being an insult and more of just an affectionate nickname. Barkovitch didn't spit it out like he had when they first met. It was more like an actual name for him. And coming from Barkovitch in that way, he didn't really mind.

"No. Stay. Please."

"I'm going." Barkovitch started towards the door and suddenly Stebbins felt a surge of panic. His father was downstairs. His father was yelling. His father was probably hitting his mother and ostracizing her for something she hadn't done. That thought made him even more terrified.

"Stay." Stebbins' voice was desperate this time. "Please, Gary. Stay." This time, his voice lowered and suddenly tears were choking his words away.

Barkovitch stopped. "Alright. Just for a bit, though." Christ, why was this fucker so hard to deny? It was like having a really annoying pet. He made his way over to Stebbins' bad and sat down next to him. "Hey, c'mon. You've never had a problem with what other people do to you. Christ, you're so fucking weird in that way. But that's good here, right?"

Stebbins nodded absentmindedly. He felt as pathetic as he looked. Jesus Christ, when had he gotten to be so...emotional? Feelings were funny and trivial, and came and went like weather. They weren't something that he wanted to talk about a lot, or even think about. Damn feelings.

"I fucking hate you, freak," Barkovitch muttered as he put an arm around Stebbins, catching the other boy by surprise.

The declaration of hatred had stopped sounding like a threat and just sounded like unwilling affection. "Do you mean that?"

"Sure, fine, whatever. Shit, I don't even know." Stebbins leaned into Barkovitch and sighed. "Yeah, have I stayed long enough?"

"But this is rather comfortable."

Barkovitch laughed. "Just hold out 'til tomorrow, Dirky, okay? I'll be like five houses down or whatever shit. If your poor, lonely soul gets too depressed you can come over or something. Actually, don't do that. But, yeah..." He finished awkwardly.

Stebbins noted that he'd just called him by his mother's pet name for him. Something about that was a combination of comforting and embarrassing. "Whatever you say."

Barkovitch disentangled himself from Stebbins and Stebbins recalled the fact that they'd slept in the same bed. He was having difficulty distinguishing between platonic need and romantic love at the time.

But he had forgotten the fact that he had some damn ugly scars on his wrists and that there was an angry father downstairs for the moment, and just for a second, Stebbins wondered about the possibility of at least temporary happiness.

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**i didn't mean for this to turn out as fluffy as it did and i am very sorry**


	9. Chapter 9

**disclaimer: these characters do not belong to me.**

* * *

Barkovitch decided to take a shortcut home, and that ended up being a pretty bad idea. Firstly because he ended up looking in the windows of the stupid shops, and second because he had a suspicion that he was going to end up getting robbed if he stayed in this area for too long.

The windows of the dumbass little shops were mostly dark, and they most sold tourist-y things. Not that anyone would really want to get tourist-y things from an obscure town in Maine. Their town was always trying too hard to be tourist-y, he thought.

As he approached one store, which was still, surprisingly, open, he noticed that they were selling scarves. Shit, he still felt a little bad about Stebbins' scarf...

Alright, no. He did not feel bad. Not in the least. He pitied Stebbins. He didn't like Stebbins and want to do nice things for him like buy him scarves. No, not at all.

He fished around in the pockets of his jacket for his wallet. Huh, he had like twenty bucks. Barkovitch sighed and went into the store. He'd just grab a scarf and give it to Stebbins tomorrow.

He decided on a purple and white striped one. Stebbins liked purple, right? Fuck, as long as it was a color that someone wouldn't usually wear, Stebbins would probably like it.

Why did he even care whether Stebbins liked it? Barkovitch paid the cashier and left, carrying the scarf.

The thing was, he and Stebbins were sort of...friends, weren't they? They did things together, they were nice to each other, well, for the most part.

He was Gary Barkovitch. He didn't have friends. In first grade, he was the kid who never had a partner when they partnered up. Art Baker had flushed his crayons down the toilet in the boys bathroom. He had never had friends, he never would.

Maybe that last part wasn't really true, though. While it was true that he didn't really want friends, maybe they just sort of forced themselves upon you? Whether he wanted friends didn't really matter, because he had one.

Okay, no, this was not going to turn into one of those friendship movies. Barkovitch decided that he was going to go home and forget all about this revelation.

"Gary? Where were you for the whole afternoon?" His mother looked down at him worriedly.

"Just took a long way home," he muttered.

"Not with that friend of yours?"

Barkovitch didn't respond. "I need to start my homework, Mom." The rest of the night, he tried very hard not to think about Stebbins at all. The value of x was much easier to focus on when he was trying not to focus on other things.

After finishing a few problems of homework-he could leave the rest for Pearson-he set the scarf down next to his bed and laid down on it, staring up at the ceiling. Shit. What had he even gotten into, walking the freak home one day and somehow ending up being his only lifeline against his abusive father or something?

Well, he'd certainly learned a lot about Stebbins. Dirk Stebbins, freak, loner, bookworm, and at times very, very afraid.  
And he supposed that he was glad for that. Stebbins occupied his time. Yeah, that was it. With that thought, Barkovitch drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, he was almost surprised to not feel Stebbins' warm body gripping him like he'd done the night before. Not that he liked it or anything. It just felt strange to be alone again.

He was able to get up and have breakfast before his mom started bothering him about homework or friends or whatever.  
He was just about to leave when he realized that he'd forgotten Stebbins' scarf, and ran up to get it. He considered just leaving it there, but Barkovitch supposed that he owed the guy for ripping up his stupid purple scarf.

It felt almost odd to walk by himself again. Was it that once he'd had a taste of what friendship was like, he'd just want more of it? Was that how it worked? Like a drug? Once you had a taste you just couldn't stop wanting to have more.  
He snorted. Only he would compare friendship to substance abuse. Ha. That was actually pretty funny.

Or was he just stupid? This was something most people are born with, that ability to just click with someone

By the time he arrived at school, Barkovitch was finding himself sick of his own company, which was odd. Shit, that wasn't just odd, that was downright wrong. Being alone was what protected him. If he gave that up...

As if on cue, a rather painfully cheerful looking Stebbins ran over to him. "Hello, Gary."

"Don't call me by my first name."

"Fine, if that's what you'd like. I, personally, don't mind being called by my first name."

Barkovitch snickered. "Good to know, Dirky. By the way, here." He rummaged around in his bag and produced the purple and white scarf.

Stebbins eyed the scarf and then took it from him. "For me?"

"Yeah, dumbfuck, who else would I give it to?"

"Because you ripped mine up? You didn't need to...this is so awfully nice of you, Barkovitch. Antisocial and mean my ass. You're..." He trailed off.

Barkovitch looked down at his feet, trying to hide the fact that he was blushing. "You're an alright guy too, I guess."

Stebbins' grin made Barkovitch slightly uncomfortable, and then he did something completely unexpected. Stebbins wrapped his arms around Barkovitch's neck and kissed him. It was a light, fluttery kiss, like a girl would give, and Barkovitch felt his eyes close because it was a peaceful, soft sensation. And then suddenly he found himself panicking.

"W-what the fuck!" He attempted to disentangle Stebbins from around him and god that kiss had felt so_ good_ but it was another _boy_ and he just couldn't- "Fuck you, I said we were friends! _Friends!_ Not _queer!"_

Stebbins looked hurt. "If that's the way you feel."

"Are you-you can't-I...Listen, I have to go to class." Barkovitch's face was red and the look on Stebbins' face was beginning to make him feel like a horrible person. He looked absolutely crushed.

_But you liked it, you sick fuck. You want him to do it again because you felt good, you were happy and for one moment you felt_ loved._ You want him to kiss your lips and your cheek and your forehead and your neck and you want that stupid freak there with you._

"I'm sorry," Stebbins said softly.

"S-shut up." He wasn't even sure whether he was talking to the voices in his head or Stebbins anymore. Was there really that much of a difference?

Barkovitch started running to class, trying to lick the taste of the stupid, disgusting thing off his lips. He just...they were both boys. That couldn't...maybe it...

And then Barkovitch mentally cursed himself for just leaving. The betrayed, crushed look on Stebbins' face was haunting him. He really shouldn't have cared. He wasn't the type to care about anybody. But he did care and that _hurt._

_In the end, I'll fuck everybody up. I am a sick, heartless bastard and hell, the real reason I ran off is because I don't deserve anybody's kisses or love or affection. Because I'm the kid who gets beat up and shoved against lockers and no one cares about me and that's all I'll ever be._

Barkovitch sat down on a bench around the side of the school, and for the first time since he was about ten, Gary Barkovitch cried. He didn't know why he was crying, god, he wasn't even sad, he just needed to let something out.

They were pathetic tears and after about ten minutes of just that, his face was beginning to hurt. He wiped his nose on his sleeve and got back up, ready for another day of being shoved around and ignored.

And fuck, he might have just lost his only chance of being anything more than that.

* * *

**it started out as a kiss how did it end up like this it was only a kiss it was only a kiss **


	10. Chapter 10

**disclaimer: only the plot belongs to me**

* * *

Barkovitch had avoided Stebbins for most of the day, but he knew that after a while this tactic was going to stop working.

And it did. Stebbins was walking beside him again on his way to English in the afternoon. "Hello, Barkovitch."  
Barkovitch didn't respond, only looking down at his feet. He'd done a shitty thing. So why was Stebbins still here? Was it some sort of masochistic response that Stebbins had to everything? Just to stick around with the wrong people?

"I said hello. Have you lost your common decency?" Stebbins giggled softly.

"Uh...hey."

"Yes, hello."

"I'm, uh...I'm sorry. For...earlier. I sort of, uh, panicked because Christ, doing new stuff is really fucking scary sometimes. It's not even that...I just..." A blush had crept onto Barkovitch's face, but he hoped that his olive skin helped hide it.

Stebbins blinked at him. "Sorry? You reacted just as I thought you'd might. What I didn't expect was an apology."

"And, I, well, I...liked it."

"That is also rather unexpected." It still puzzled Barkovitch why the other boy spoke like he was some sort of weird-ass college professor who had experimented with drugs.

"Yeah, I just wanted to say...uh...I'm sorry." Shit, this it the first time I've ever apologized and meant it, isn't it? That's just pathetic. "Friends?" He considered adding some unsure comment about the fact that he didn't really know, but decided against it.

Stebbins smiled. "As in, really, completely friends? No calling it being 'alliances' or 'not enemies?'" Barkovitch wasn't sure how to respond, and before he had a chance to, Stebbins started giving him excited kisses on every part of his face that it was possible to kiss.

"U-uh..." Barkovitch felt his face darken. "Christ, Freak, calm down." But part of him secretly enjoyed the display of affection.

"Oh, hush, you like it." Stebbins looked like his personality had somehow become made of spun sugar.

There was a loud, metallic noise as the bell rang. Barkovitch's face was still red, but he had somewhat regained his composure. "I'll walk you to your house if you'd like. But none of that stuff we did last night."

"You make it sound so terrible." Stebbins giggled and the two boys started out of the school. Barkovitch looked around to make sure there wasn't anybody like McVries watching and then wrapped an arm around Stebbins' shoulders. Christ, he wasn't in love with the freak or anything.

They were just...really good friends. Really good friends who kissed a lot.

"So, why the sudden change of attitude?"

"Huh?"

"You seemed pretty averse to all this earlier. Why are you suddenly accepting it?"

"Dunno. I guess it just...I felt bad. God, I fucking hate talking about my feelings."

Stebbins laughed. "Well, then. That's fine. Whatever the reason was, frankly, I'm glad that you changed your mind."

It felt...weird...to have someone trusting in him and showing affection towards him. He definitely wasn't the type of person who anybody usually talked to, let alone appreciated attention from. It was a good sort of weird. Huh. Stebbins was a good sort of weird, too. Life tended to be a good sort of weird, he supposed.

The walk seemed to go faster than Barkovitch had remembered, and they were silent for most of it. Stebbins occasionally made a contented little sigh, but other than that neither of them appeared to want to spoil the moment.

"Your house is old as shit. You should probably clean it."

"The inside is as clean as it can be with a house this old." Stebbins looked down at the garden, which was wrought with thorns and looked like it hadn't been tended for years. "The garden could use some help, though."

"Agreed. Uh, well, see you tomorrow, I guess."

"The same to you." Barkovitch had to lean up a little to do it, but before he could say something to stop himself he kissed Stebbins gently.

"Uh. Yeah. See you tomorrow."

Stebbins smiled and made his way through the tangled mess of the garden to the front door. He was about to grab the doorknob when it turned without any assistance, and he found himself facing his father. "Dirk."

"Hello, father." Stebbins' smile disappeared quickly, replaced by one of forced calm.

"Dirk, what was that girl you were kissing outside? You and I need to talk about it."

"You mean Barkovitch?"

His father's emotions weren't visible from behind his sunglasses, but his lips appeared to be in a none too happy expression. "That was...a boy?"

"Yes." _Shit._

"Dirk, we really must talk about this. First the books, now this." The Major almost grunted out the words. "Has there been something you've been hiding from us?"

"No, not at all. Sir. I was simply saying goodbye to him. Nothing at all."

"By kissing him? What an interesting way to say goodbye to a friend. Dirk, you need to inform me about things like this."

"But, Sir. You're not around much. And I don't have to tell you anything." Stebbins found the tone of his voice rising and part of him was beginning to think that this whole thing was a really, really bad idea.

The Major glared down at him. "Don't be insolent with me."

"I wasn't being..." His father then promptly reached down and hit him. The feeling of the hand hitting his face stung more than it probably should have. "Why did you..."

"You_ are_ being insolent," The Major hissed.

Stebbins knew better than to disagree. "Yes. I was being insolent. I'm sorry."

"What do you need to add to that?" The former soldier was practically snarling at him, and before Stebbins had a chance to respond, he felt his father's fist connecting with this face.

"Sir," Stebbins squeaked. The tall man in front of him had a rather dangerous look in his eyes. Then it hit Stebbins that he was most probably drunk and his father was not someone to mess with when drunk and he should probably just run.

"Good."

Stebbins gave a quick nod and made a dash for the stairs. The Major yelled something profane and Stebbins ducked into the bathroom. Things had been going so well for him. Looking in the mirror, he realized that his father had made a bruise around his eye. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

Taking out the razor, he wondered what Barkovitch would think of him right now. The cut he made was fairly large and he noticed that a bit of blood had gotten on the floor. That wasn't good. He pushed his sleeves back down and went into his mother's room, which was still empty since he presumed that she hadn't yet gotten home.

He fished around in her desk for the school directory, and then went into his room to look for his barely used cell phone. Barkovitch's number had a lot of fours in it, and while waiting for somebody to pick up he noticed that his sweater had developed a bloodstain. That wasn't good either.

After a few minutes of ringing, he decided to just leave a message. "Barkovitch, how would you feel if I ran away from home?"

* * *

"it started out cute what happened" a saga by user collie parkillo


	11. Chapter 11

**disclaimer: (rapping) this stuff isn't mine**

* * *

It was 2 AM when Stebbins' phone rang.

The irritating threetone noise of it managed to rouse him, and he tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes as he picked up at looked down at the caller ID.

Barkovitch isn't exactly consistent about answering his phone, is he?

"What? You want to run away from home?" The other boy sounded alarmed, and the sudden force of his voice made Stebbins' still sleep-blurred head spin.

"It's 2 AM." Barkovitch snorted. "Yes, I would like to run away from home."

"It's something with your fucking father, isn't it?" Stebbins' friend's voice had turned angry. Not the sort of anger that it usually had in it, but an anger that seemed to come from deeper down. Somehow this anger was more dangerous than the other, more trivial kind.

"Yes," he said slowly. "It is."

"Christ, what'd that asshole do to you? I'll come after him and dance on his fucking grave." Barkovitch was spitting the words into the phone, he could almost hear the breath intonations the boy was making.

"No, don't do that, please don't..." Stebbins' voice was a sleepy whisper. "He...he hit me. I've got a bruise in two places and..."

There was a moment of silence between them, the only noise being the crackling of the quiet on the phone and the noises of each other's breathing through it.

Barkovitch cut him off. "That shithead. That fucking shithead. That's illegal, you know. You could get him sued! Or he could lose custody of you or whatever!"

"Keep your voice down."

"Sorry." He still appeared to be seething, though. "What's this about running away, though? Why'd you call me? I mean, I'm not an expert on running away form home or anything. I've tried a couple times, but..." Barkovitch left the sentence hanging.

Another silence. "You could...leave with me...I don't want to...be alone." Stebbins' slurred, half-asleep speech was painfully honest.

"Where would we go?"

"Anywhere."

Barkovitch seemed to take a moment to mull this over. "But the thing is, like, I fucking hate this town but wouldn't people notice?"

"Me?" Stebbins laughed. It was a soft, bitter desperate sound. "No one cares. You and I, we don't matter to everybody else. I could commit suicide and no one would notice."

"Yeah, you're right." Barkovitch's voice was tight with worry. "Listen, I think my parents are getting up. I'll talk to you tomorrow, Dirky." The use of his nickname somehow put Stebbins more at peace.

He collapsed back down on his bed, which he noticed had a bit of a bloodstain where he'd been laying on his arm. He'd fix that tomorrow.

Tomorrow came all too quickly. That was what Stebbins hated about sleep. That it never seemed to last as long as he needed it to. He'd slept in his clothes-again. His mother considered that to be lazy but he didn't really see the point in changing clothes to go to bed. Lazy or not, he didn't really care.

He tiptoed down the hall and stopped next to the bathroom. There was some burning urge to just end all of it by just slicing away at his stupid, pathetic arms and legs and chest and heart until there was nothing left of the boy that had once been Dirk Stebbins.

_I'm not going to let it get bad. It's just stress relief, that's all. Just stress relief._

Just a little. He'd just cut a little. Just enough to get him through the day. He shut the bathroom door and ran the edge of the blade along his wrist, not enough to draw much blood but enough to make him wince. He scratched at some of the older scars on his arms in place of making new ones. Yes, that was alright, just a little bit of stress relief.

His father didn't seem to be up yet, which was definitely a plus. As he tiptoed downstairs, he noticed that his mother wasn't there. She was probably at work already. Just like normal. Stebbins gulped down a bowl of Wheaties-which tasted like plastic-and grabbed the lunch his mother had packed for him the night before. Presumably jelly sandwiches, like always. He didn't mind the monotony of his eating choices. Sandwiches were good.

As he walked out, Stebbins noticed that it was snowing a little. He debated going back in to get a coat, but then decided against it as he saw a light go on on the upstairs floor. He didn't really get cold that much anyways.

He was surprised to run into Barkovitch on the street corner near his house. As always, Barkovitch looked angry and slightly out of place.

"Hey."

Stebbins nodded. "Hey."

"You alright?"

Stebbins shrugged. "I suppose."

"Don't lie to me. If that fucking...god, I can't even think of an insult, if he hit you again, I'll fucking kill that bastard."

"He isn't even awake. It's about seven, Barkovitch."

His friend laughed. "I guess. Yeah. So, anyways, do you have some sort of plan?"

"No. Never have a plan. That's my mantra, really. Planning things out never works, since if one does that one gets so detail-oriented that, one tends to forget the larger picture of things."

Barkovitch then suddenly started laughing. Stebbins blinked. "What's funny?"

"N-no...It's just...you're so serious about it. Your hatred of planning. Personally, I think fucking plans are the only reason we're even still alive." He threw an arm around Stebbins' shoulders as they crossed the street. "You've got to have a plan, Dirky."

"I don't particularly have one. We could just...leave, you know. There doesn't have to be much of an explanation. Holden Caulfield left with no explanation and ended up going on a journey of brilliant self-discovery."

"Would we be going on a journey of brilliant self-discovery?"

Stebbins grinned in spite of himself. "Perhaps. And Holden's wasn't exactly brilliant self-discovery. He called on a prostitute and instead of doing the normal actions just cried and told her about his feelings."

"What a fucking sap."

"Don't insult a favorite fictional character of mine. Him and Alice of Alice in Wonderland."

"Why do you like fucking Alice?! All she does is look around and get confused a hell of a lot of the time."

"You've read Alice in Wonderland?"

"Well, not really, I mean, when I was five I watched the Disney film..."

"Exactly. So you're in no position to judge.

Barkovitch glared at him, and Stebbins smiled charmingly. "All I know is that there's a creepy-ass cat and some dude who might be on drugs and then some really angry queens or some shit."

"You obviously need to read it. I've got a copy in my bag...it wasn't defiled as Through The Looking Glass was." Barkovitch snorted indignantly and Stebbins thrust the book into his hands. "There you are."

"You want me to actually read this?"

Stebbins nodded and realized that he'd completely forgotten about running away and his father and his stress relief. But maybe it was better that way.

* * *

**i had to copy like half of this out from a piece of scrap paper look at how i suffer**


	12. Chapter 12

**disclaimer: the long walk does not belong to me.**

* * *

The second floor school bathrooms were usually vacant.

This could have been for a few different reasons. They smelled like shit, for a start. The toilet water was blue with some sort of strange chemical, and lastly, it was just ugly. The color scheme was a combination of a tan, vomit-like color and a pasty, monochromatic white.

Somehow Stebbins usually ended up there, for whatever reason. It was one of the few places where no one was ever there, and maybe he liked that about it. He could spend more than ten minutes out of class in the smelly, ugly bathrooms and no one seemed to even notice or attempt to look for him.

He sat up on top of the sink, staring back at his own reflection. He looked somewhat less like a little streak of nothing than before, but he still gave off the appearance of somebody's discarded, badly dressed ragdoll.

Stebbins didn't know why, but he found himself rolling up the sleeves of his sweater and staring down at the pale, freshly cut skin of his arms. They were skinny and bony and scars lacerated the skin nearly up to his elbow.

He frowned down at it, like it was some sort of unattractive inconvenience that was simply in the way. It was true, really. They were in the way. They obstructed normality and happiness, he supposed.

The door of the bathroom swung open, and Stebbins instinctively hopped down from the sink. The boy who'd just entered was Gary Barkovitch. It was almost cliché, the way they seemed to be running into each other all the time. Like some sort of silly novel where the two protagonists are pushed together by fate and destiny.

"What're you doing in here?" Stebbins smiled, although it had a touch of falsehood in it.

"I had to piss," Barkovitch said frankly. "I could ask you the same thing."

"It's quiet here."

"You are one weird little shit," he said, making his way towards Stebbins and looking him up and down, as though assessing him.

Suddenly, horribly, Stebbins realized that his sleeves were still up. There wasn't any use in covering them, although his hands made their way to roll down his sleeves again almost out of instinct.

"Stebbins," Barkovitch said slowly. "Show me your arms."

To anybody else, the request would have been easy. "My arms are fairly nondescript, Barkovitch. I can't think of why you would ever want to see them."

"Show me your fucking arms, Stebbins." There was a protectively angry quality to his voice, like a tiger defending its mate from poachers. "I mean it."

"I told you, there's nothing to see."

Barkovitch grabbed Stebbins' right arm, staring down at it with an expression of shock and sadness on his face. "Dirky, oh my god. Oh my fucking god."

"There's nothing to see." Stebbins' voice was tight, and suddenly he felt like sobbing.

"This is sure as hell something to see. How long have you been...have you been..." He trailed off, running his hand across the marred skin.

"It's nothing, a habit," he said dismissively.

"Dirk Stebbins, you fucking look at me right now." Stebbins did as he was told, meeting Barkovitch's ochre colored eyes. "Listen here. I love you. That's stupid and fucking clichéd but I think it should be said. I love you and it makes me want to fucking cry to see you slicing your own skin up like cheese through a goddamn cheese grater. It probably seems like I'm angry at you, but I'm not really. I'm angry because this is something you don't fucking deserve. You deserve to live in some gigantic mansion with ten thousand servants and a mother who doesn't have to work her ass off, and a father who cares about you more than that piece of shit Major. You look at me when I'm talking to you, Dirky, because you need to realize that you deserve _so much better_ than what you get, and you'd better fucking believe it."

Stebbins tried to form some sort of calm, hard-to-decipher phrase that he'd normally just be able to come up with in under a minute, but in this instance his throat was tight and his eyes were watering. Before he could stop himself, he was crying. It was a soft, pathetic sound, and he felt terrible doing it.

Barkovitch awkwardly wrapped his arms around him, despite the fact that Stebbins was taller by about an inch. "You need to stop all this, okay? Just stop it. Because if we're going to leave or whatever shit, you've gotta promise me that you're going to stop."

"I promise," Stebbins said weakly, still feeling pathetic. And then, more strongly, "How long have we been in the bathroom for?"

"Oh, who cares? This school doesn't teach any of us a goddamn thing. C'mere." Barkovitch sat down against the wall and beckoned for Stebbins to join him. "Listen, Collie Parker fucking apologized to me this morning. Can you believe that? Collie Parker." Stebbins nodded and sniffled loudly. Barkovitch took his hand and examined his arm again. "You know, you're pretty fucking brave, Dirky. For putting up with all that. I don't blame you for needing to release it after awhile."

"It hurt, but..." Stebbins trailed off. "Physical pain is easier than emotional, I suppose."

Barkovitch leaned down and brushed his lips across the cut area. "Feel better?"

Stebbins allowed himself a small smile, because the whole situation was just so goddamn fictional-feeling. As though they'd walked out of some novel meant to educate teenagers about the sadness of life, the kind that high schoolers would throw out after one trimester and some of the braver ones might burn or rip apart.

"Yes, better," he said. It wasn't a complete lie. He felt better than he ever had before, after all the nights of being alone. He felt better. Not good, but better.

"Good." Gary Barkovitch had never been the gentle type, but somehow these words were gentler than even the words his mother had spoken to him when he was younger. "Really. Christ, I've never been any good at this stuff. Guess I've never had to, I mean..."

Stebbins sighed softly and moved closer to him. It was funny, how this whole scene had happened in the stinky, drab, disgusting school bathroom. Maybe that was where the pair of them belonged. He recalled some Oscar Wilde quote, something about being in the gutter and looking up at the sky.

That was it. They were in the gutter, they were the novels that people threw out and burned, they were the trash that people forgot to put inside the metal trashcans and ended up blowing down the street dejectedly.

Even trash in the landfill has some sort of worth though, he thought to himself. They once belonged to somebody, served some purpose.

"What're you thinking about?"

"Garbage," Stebbins said half-heartedly.

"There's no shortage of that in the world."

"Exactly. You and I are garbage, really, in the scheme of things. But even garbage can be seen as amazing and wonderful if looked at through the right eyes. Piss is piss, no matter what, but there's always somebody who isn't repulsed by it."

"Did you just use piss kinks as a metaphor for love?"

Stebbins laughed, a genuine laugh, actually. "Yes, I suppose I did." And the stink of the bathroom floors didn't matter for a moment, because the boy whose books got torn apart by bullies in the hallways and whose only friends to walk him home were autumn leaves in the wind suddenly found himself gradually, beautifully trusting.

* * *

**bye**


	13. Chapter 13

**disclaimer: the long walk does not belong to me.**

* * *

Sitting for an entire period in the school bathroom had not been Barkovitch's original plan.

Stebbins had sort of crumpled into his embrace, having closed his eyes and not appearing to want to move. Barkovitch debated waking him up and telling him that they were technically cutting class, but he just looked so at peace, and hell, the kid probably needed the rest.

"Hey, Stebbins." He shoved the other boy gently. Stebbins sighed softly and it took Barkovitch a moment to realize that he'd fallen asleep. "Hey, c'mon, only one more period 'till lunch. You can do that, right?"

Stebbins didn't respond, and Barkovitch was about to shove him harder when the door opened. He had an instinct to dive into a stall or something, but honestly, it would have been totally pointless.

It was, to his immense luck, Peter McVries.

"Oh, hey," McVries said, sounding weirdly casual. "Fancy seeing you here, killer." His eyes traveled to Stebbins. "Oh. Okay. Should I leave?"

Barkovitch stared at him, feeling his face heat up. "Fuck off, Scarface."

"I don't even want to know what you two were doing in here."

"Just because you're a flamboyant homosexual doesn't mean that everyone else is," Barkovitch said irritably.

Just then, Stebbins woke up, looking around blearily. "Oh, come on. And I'm not homosexual, I'm actually bisexual, mind you. I didn't come in here to talk about my sexuality, so please just let me use the fucking toilet in peace, thanks."

Barkovitch rolled his eyes and turned to Stebbins. "Christ, he's the only person here weirder than you."

Stebbins laughed quietly, still looking somewhat shaken. Understandably so, Barkovitch thought. He should probably go easy on the freak for awhile. The little shit had it pretty tough.

He couldn't help but feel that he'd completely fucked things up, that his idea of comfort probably wasn't sufficient. It had seemed to work, but then again, there was no way to tell what went on in Stebbins' head unless he told you.

McVries finished and turned to the pair of them. "Cutting class in the bathroom is really stupid, by the way. If you want somewhere private to fuck, try the janitor's closet."

"The answer to the question I never fuckin' asked," Barkovitch said.

McVries beamed, gave Barkovitch the finger, and left the bathroom. "It's a bit good-humored, isn't it?" Stebbins said.

"Huh?"

"Between you and him. You don't really hate each other. It's all in good humor." A bit of strength had returned to Stebbins' voice.

"I guess. He really pisses me off. Him and that goddamn Ray Garraty."

"We aren't much different from they are." Stebbins pushed down his sleeves, looking up at the ceiling. "Are we...together like they are?"

Barkovitch shrugged. "Sure. Whatever. If you want us to be. Doesn't really matter to me either way."

"Alright." Stebbins pulled himself up, seeming surprisingly unphased by the whole experience they'd had in the bathroom.

Barkovitch supposed that that was his way of dealing with it. A sort of way of shielding himself from his own emotions until he had the time to let them seep out properly. It was like Barkovitch's little wall of insults, but not as...offensive.

The rest of the schoolday went uneventfully. The two boys went to sit outside for lunch, despite the fact that it was still snowing a bit.

"Have you started _Alice?"_

"No. Why're you so keen on me reading that dumb book?"

Stebbins smiled that knowing smile that made Barkovitch wonder what really went on in that strange little head of his. He knew that there were certainly some dark, horrible things in there, that was for certain. But really, the inside of Stebbins' head was probably some of ethereal, disorganized tangle of books and strangely colored clothes. For every dark thought in the blond's head, there was most probably something bright.

Stebbins blinked at him. "Where are your thoughts wandering off to?"

"Thinking about you," Barkovitch said with a clichéd, overdone swoon.

"Really." Stebbins leaned over and kissed him. The sudden gesture of affection made Barkovitch jump back slightly. "Occupy your thoughts with something more concrete, then."

"Who gives a shit about the concrete? My English teacher's always rambling about abstract metaphors and whatever shit. Yeah, you're pretty abstract, Dirky."

Stebbins laughed, then his face turned somewhat more serious. "I'd like to thank you. For earlier." The word 'earlier' seemed to represent what he was afraid to talk about.

Barkovitch looked around uncomfortably. "Hell, I thought I totally made it worse for you, you know how I mean, I'm not a good guy for that sort of stuff."

"No, what I was going to say was that you reacted better than I imagined that anybody to...it." He shifted sideways from his spot on the bench, staring up at the sky, which had turned a somewhat white color.

Barkovitch looked at him for a few seconds. That little bit of silence said what neither of them seemed to be able to get out through whatever awkward speech they tried at. "You cold, Dirky?"

"Why do you call me that?"

"Do you hate it?" Barkovitch couldn't help grinning a little.

"No, I'm only curious. It's what my mother calls me when she wants me to think of her as any other normal mother.

Barkovitch wasn't necessarily sure what that meant, but it seemed good enough. "Well...uh...it just sorta...happened, I guess."

Stebbins smiled, and Barkovitch recalled back when they hadn't even been close to friends and Stebbins would always smile while saying something snarky and probably very eloquent. This was a different smile, the joyless one that he'd been used to seeing replaced with something that looked so happy that it was almost a total cliché.

"It's a bit endearing. And in answer to your question, yes, I am somewhat cold." Barkovitch draped his arm around the other boy. "Not wearing a coat was a bit of a stupid thing to do, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, seriously. I can see my fucking _breath."_

"Did you do that silly thing when you were younger where you used to pretend you were some kind of beast breathing fire?"

"I didn't know anybody else did that." He laughed. "Hey, Dirky?"

"Yes?

"You sure you want to skip town? This is pretty nice."

Stebbins sighed, and Barkovitch watched how visible the intake and outletting of breath was in this weather. "You're correct, this is...but I'll have to go home at night and then..."

"I get it. I guess things would be...like this, or something, all the time if we just left."

"I think if we chose to leave, then our time here has been concluded pretty sufficiently today." Stebbins took a bite of his sandwich, which he'd barely touched.

The snow kept falling, soaking through Stebbins' sweater and Barkovitch's sweatshirt, but none of it really mattered anymore. "Sure, alright. I mean, I dunno where we'd go, but I guess that's part of the whole point of running away from home. Bet there's some metaphor like that in that dumb book you want me to read."

"Speaking of that, you should really start it."

"Fine, okay, I will!" He glared at Stebbins, who gave him the over-satisfied smile that alternated between pissing Barkovitch off and making his heartbeat speed up. That was the truth about Stebbins, really. He was irritating and smug, but on the other hand, Stebbins was the only friend he really had. And Barkovitch had to admit that he was a good kisser, too.

* * *

**these two alternate between being really sad and dark and being really cute i don't know where this is even going**


	14. Chapter 14

Stebbins really didn't realize how shitty it felt to run away from home until he was writing a goodbye note.

He'd stuffed an assortment of things into his backpack, dumping out his school supplies onto the bed and replacing them with clothes and favorite books and even a small stuffed rabbit, just for good measure. He'd put on his coat, and the scarf Barkovitch bought him, and had been completely prepared to just walk out the door. Until he was writing the goodbye note, he really didn't feel like it was real.

But now, standing in front of fridge trying to scribble some sort of farewell onto the flowery fridge notepad, he found himself staring at the blank piece of paper dubiously.

_Dear mother,_ was the best start he could come up with._ I know you'd want me to call you 'mom,' but I really just don't have that in me._ There. That was a good start, at least. He racked his brain for something that didn't sound ridiculously cliché, and very little came.

_I'm going to be straight and to the point here. I've left this stupid town, or at least I am in the process of doing so. Don't worry, I'm not alone. I'm with my friend (For lack of a better expression of our relationship) Barkovitch._

Stebbins paused, trying to think of what else to say._ I suppose I was just sick of The Major coming around, of people ripping my books apart and stomping on my homework in the hallways. I love you, but at the risk of sounding clichéd, I do think this is the better thing to do and I'm very glad to have had you as a mother. This may not be permanent, but then again, it might be._

He put down the pen, sighing, and then signed it as Stebbins, then crossed it out and wrote Dirk. His mother would probably only be ashamed that he didn't feel comfortable in his own skin if he signed his last name as opposed to his first.

He glanced at the paper one last time and then added, It's not your fault at the bottom. Because Stebbins knew his mother, and he knew that the first thing she'd do was blame herself. After sticking the note on the fridge with a large magnet that said something about keeping a good attitude on it, Stebbins took a deep breath and turned around to look upstairs.

It seemed pathetic to just leave without at least doing some sort of final gesture. Stebbins shrugged his bag off, leaving it on a chair, and marched up the stairs.

His father was most probably in his mother's room. It seemed that all The Major did was sleep, eat, and hit him whenever he visited. Stebbins could practically hear him breathing hard from down the hall-the man barely even moved, why was he always panting?

"Father," he said slowly, swinging the door open.

The Major looked up at him through mirrored sunglasses-who wore mirrored sunglasses while resting?-and grunted irritably. "You are not to call me that."

"Alright, Father." Stebbins smiled, a wide, irritating grin that usually caused people to hit him. "I was just going to inform you. I'm leaving."

"You're what?" His father stood up from the bed, his face red and angry. "How dare you treat your mother so, Dirk?"

"Oh, you're so much better, aren't you?" He wondered if he'd picked up this level of obnoxiousness from Barkovitch. It certainly sounded so. "I am leaving because I would much rather run off to anywhere with a boy who loves me than live with a father who hits me."

"Dirk!" The Major was about to grab him and probably inflict at least some sort of violence to him, so Stebbins dashed down the stairs.

"You aren't supposed to hurt your son," Stebbins said, flashing another smile at The Major. "Didn't you know, daddy? You're supposed to love me and take care of me. Unfortunately, you blew your fucking chance." The Major yelled something, probably a combination of a reprimand and a threat, but Stebbins tuned out of it and swung his backpack around his shoulders. "Well, goodbye,_ sir."_

The Major grabbed him by the shoulders, turning his son around to face him. "In that case, then, you are kicked out."

Stebbins tried not to look surprised and instead just flashed another grin at his father as he slammed the door behind him.

He'd agreed to meet Barkovitch on the corner right around not now-then again, he didn't know what time it was, but it was probably close enough to whenever they'd agreed. He stood there on the corner for a bit, breathing out just to see his breath in the cold air.

After what seemed like an eternity, Barkovitch finally showed up. The small boy was panting hard, and had nearly covered himself in winter gear. He wore a gigantic scarf and looked somewhat comical with his small frame covered in various clothing articles. "Hey," he said awkwardly, his voice muffled by the scarf.

"It's not even that cold," Stebbins said, laughing. Barkovitch blushed slightly, or maybe it was just the temperature reddening his cheeks.

"I just wanted to be prepared," he muttered, still blushing a little. "Did you say goodbye to your mom or whatever?"

"I wrote her a note. Oh, and my father kicked me out. So I don't suppose I can come back." Stebbins sounded all too casual about this, but a slight lump still rose in his throat. This was it. He was leaving. With nobody except for a sullen boy that could either be considered his best friend or his boyfriend.

Apparently some of that showed on his face, because Barkovitch wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "I got a place for us. I've got a brother who's in university up in Kittery, and I thought maybe we could get over there? Josh is a good guy, I mean, he's sort of a dick sometimes, but..." Barkovitch shrugged.

"That sounds fine."

"I guess we'll have to fuckin' walk or something? And hitchhike? I thought I had a plan, Christ, I always have a plan."  
Stebbins tried to picture the distance between their shitty little town and Kittery. It wasn't too far, probably not over forty miles. "Hitchhikers aren't uncommon around here, we could probably get through with that alright. And walking isn't unhealthy."

Barkovitch snorted. "It's snowing. And like, twenty degrees out."

"I find that snow is beautiful, despite being cold. Although I prefer it when it thunders out." Stebbins said dreamily.

Barkovitch gawked at him. "How can you like fucking thunderstorms?! Those are terrifying!"

"They're fascinating."

"You're one weird fucking kid."

"You've told me," Stebbins said, smiling at Barkovitch. "How far is the walk out of the town?"

Barkovitch blinked. "Uh. I dunno. Maybe it...about a fifteen minute walk if we walk at a normal pace?" Snow had begun to crust the top of Barkovitch's winter hat and the small piece of his bangs that was exposed. It made him look somewhat angelic in the soft, white light of the day.

"As I said, I don't mind walking."

The two boys started down the sidewalk, their feet crunching in the snow. "Thank you for the scarf you got me." It seemed like a while back, now that he thought about it.

"I'm no good at gifts," he muttered. Stebbins leaned forward and pecked Barkovitch's cheek, nearly causing him to stumble over.

Despite the fact that it was extremely cold and there was very little planning behind any of it, it was easier than he'd imagined, and for all he knew, it could have just been a walk down the street. Stebbins supposed that he should have felt regret, but it felt more like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

* * *

**i haven't updated this for awhile hey but i have a Plan there are only gonna be a few more chapters of this? yeah.**


	15. Chapter 15

"I _told_ you we should have hitchhiked!" Barkovitch huffed, watching the way his breath was visible in the cold air. "It's fucking freezing!"

"It's not terrible."

"You're not even wearing a goddamn coat! I'm wearing two sweatshirts and I'm freezing! How are you not cold?!"

Stebbins looked at him with an expression of mock seriousness. "Perhaps my body temperature's just higher than yours." Another car whizzed past them and Stebbins stepped further away from the edge of the highway. The snow had started falling steadily, although more lightly than earlier. It made the whole world seem slightly muted. "And it isn't even that cold. I'm more concerned about whether we're going the right direction."

Barkovitch grunted and wrapped his arms around himself. "Trust me. Kittery's this way. I've been a bunch of times."

Stebbins glanced around, looking up at the sky, which was a silver color almost similar to that of the highway outskirting town. "Are you quite sure?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

Barkovitch shrugged, and Stebbins laughed softly. To begin with, he'd been sure that Barkovitch was completely unapproachable and standoffish, but the other boy was really just a rather short, usually irritable high-schooler who didn't know where he was going.

The road was silent save for the sound of wheels against concrete, a rough whoosh sound that both of them had heard from their windows thousands of times but had never really acknowledged. Stebbins supposed that a lot of things in life were like that. You don't acknowledge them until you're walking right next to them.

"I enjoy the sound of the cars."

Barkovitch looked up, pulled out of his train of thought. "How? I think it's annoying as hell."

"It's calming, somehow."

"I guess."

The silence that laid between them normally would have made Stebbins uncomfortable, but he figured that they both needed some time to think. Aside from the whizzing of the cars, every once in awhile the way their feet crunched in the snow and the hissing of the wind were audible.

He thought vaguely of his mother, and wondered if she was worrying. Knowing his mother, she most likely was sitting at the kitchen table, reading his note over and over again and trying to find something to prove that she was dreaming it.

Barkovitch rarely talked about his parents, but his mother had seemed to care about him more than she let on. But then again, Barkovitch probably knew her better than he did. And Barkovitch surely had a father. He'd probably grown up with a father who taught him how to do things like catch a ball and ride a bike and all those things Stebbins had attempted to teach himself at the age of four and five.

He still recalled crashing his bike multiple times and still never really being able to catch or throw accurately. He'd grown to think that even if he had had a father, that probably would have been unavoidable.

"Barkovitch?"

"Yeah?"

"What's your father like?"

"I dunno. Fatherly. Goes to work a lot. He has a bunch of those '#1 Dad' mugs, but I sure as fuck didn't get them for him, so either Josh did or he bought them for himself." Barkovitch snorted. "He's always telling me that I can tell him whatever I want and that it's okay to be different or whatever shit."

"Is that how fathers are supposed to be?" Stebbins looked at him quizzically.

"Hell if I know. There's no set parenting manual or whatever."

"Maybe there should be. It would have helped my father." He stared at the road again. A Jeep drove past, and Stebbins shivered, although it was extremely unlikely that that Jeep belonged to his father. "Then again, I doubt he'd follow it very well."

"Why're you always worried about your goddamn father?"

"Because he...he...you know what he does." Stebbins unhooked his hand from Barkovitch's and grasped one of his own, lacing his fingers together and digging his nails into the skin of his palms. "He's an intense man, and I don't react well to that."

"Well, you could always just not fucking react. That wouldn't have been hard."

Yes. That was right. It was his fault that his arms were scarred and there were bruises on his legs. The suspicion had been rising in his throat for a long time, and Barkovitch had confirmed it.

Stebbins felt color rising in his cheeks, and started walking at a slightly faster pace. No, he hadn't done anything. In the newspapers, they always said that girls were asking for it if they wore revealing clothes, but Stebbins hadn't done anything to provoke his father. Right? His footsteps made loud, crunching noises in the snow. "It isn't that easy, you know!"

"I meant-"

The words were out before Stebbins could stop them. "Learn some empathy! I'm no expert in that field either, but at least I try! You expect everyone to just accept that you don't understand other people!" A lump had formed in his throat, and suddenly he felt sick to his stomach.

Barkovitch stared at him, dumbfounded. "It isn't that fucking easy!"

"Exactly! It isn't pleasant to have someone chastise you for something you can't help, does it? Something that you feel was inflicted on you with little to no provocation as opposed to being something you brought upon yourself?" Stebbins swore he heard a sneer in his own voice.

"You just like to play around with people's feelings so that you can pretend like you understand!"

"Speak for yourself." They'd stopped walking, now, and Stebbins didn't know what had triggered this sudden yelling, but neither of them seemed to be able to stop.

He waited for a response for a few minutes, but none came. It was the same kind of silence as earlier, a silence where something in him willed the background noises to be louder and more vivid to distract him from the fact of the awkward, uncomfortable silence.

After what seemed like an eternity of the only sound being each other's breathing, Barkovitch finally managed to say something. "Sorry. Christ, I just...I fucking..." He trailed off. "I don't fucking get it, do I? I'm terrible."

"You're right, though. I suppose it is my fault."

"No, look...I fucked up, okay? I say things I don't mean a lot." He looked down miserably. "Nothing's your fault, I'm just a fucking dick who doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut. I don't know anything about that sorta situation."  
"I accept your apology," Stebbins said, hoping that he didn't sound as emotionless and nonchalant as he thought he did.

"How far to Kittery, again?"

"I don't fucking know."

"I thought you knew where we were going."

He shrugged. "I know the general direction, I guess, but I figured it'd be a lot more recognizable than it really is. Christ, the entire highway looks the same for like fifteen miles."

"So you don't know where you're going after all."

"I guess I don't."

Both of them laughed, and despite the slight discomfort of it, Stebbins took it as a sign that things were fine between them.

* * *

i needed to update something this will have like one more chapter so yeah


	16. Chapter 16

One thing that Stebbins and Barkovitch hadn't anticipated was how hard it would snow.

The white frozen water had been blanketing down for about an hour, and Kittery wasn't getting any closer. Honestly, if Stebbins hadn't trusted Barkovitch's sense of direction, he would have sworn that they were going the wrong way.

"I think…we're going the wrong way."

"You _think?" _ Stebbins raised an eyebrow. Barkovitch glared at him. Snow was starting to crust the other boy's eyelashes and hair, and at first it had made him look like a small, dark, angry angel, but now he just looked soaked and upset.

"Chill with the sarcasm, Dirky. Do you have any better idea of where we are? Because I can't see a goddamn thing." The atmosphere between them had calmed down to friendly bickering, and Stebbins had started to realize that it felt nice to have someone throw swears around and call him stupid without trying to hurt him.

"I don't know, either. Perhaps we should stop for a little bit." He gestured to the snow-covered roadside. The rail that went along the side of the road didn't look like a bad place to sit. Yeah, it would be painful, but it was better than nothing.

"And sit in the fucking snow? I'm freezing my ass off already, I don't want that to become literal."

Stebbins giggled, wrapping his arms tighter around Barkovitch's waist. His sweater was soaked through and Barkovitch's sweatshirt didn't feel any better, but at least Barkovitch had a little bit more body heat than he did.

"I think we should hitchhike," Barkovitch said.

"And risk being kidnapped and being even farther from our original destination?"

"You're paranoid." He rolled his eyes. "Most hitchhikers are assholes, but not kidnappers. Definitely not kidnappers. Hey, Dirky, do that thing where you look really cute."

"You're the more aesthetically pleasing one."

"We're not gonna have this argument. That's clichéd as fuck. I'll stick out my thumb if you're so paranoid of getting kidnapped." Stebbins snorted, but Barkovitch stuck out his hand anyways.

"If you're so against clichés, then why are you just using the way they do in movies? For all you know, that could be completely ineffective."

"Shut up, Stebbins, I'm trying to get us somewhere warm and dry. I know what I'm doing."

After four or five cars passing and one woman leaning out to curse at them, Stebbins started doubting whether Barkovitch really did know what he was doing.

Finally, a Buick pulled up. The car was a dark blue color and the person inside looked like the kind who would probably work in a lumber yard. "Who the hell are you two?"

"Dirk Stebbins and Gary Barkovitch," Stebbins said, before Barkovitch had a chance to retort with some angry rant. "We're trying to get to Kittery. Would you be so kind as to take us there?"

The man eyed them suspiciously. "Fine."

"We're trying to get to his brother's." Stebbins smiled saccharinely, trying his best to look like he wasn't almost freezing to death and about ready to snap at the man and tell him to stop asking questions and just take them.

"You running away?"

"Personal reasons." Stebbins hoped his grin was enough to convince the man, and sure enough, he gestured them inside. The car was warm and Stebbins noticed that both he and Barkovitch were dripping wet, and thought about apologizing, but then decided against it seeing as the man was listening to some loud ACDC song on the radio.

"Where are you kids from?"

"Just the town over."

"Got a nephew there. Name's Abraham. You know him?"

"Think I've seen him before." Barkovitch seemed to be trying his best to be polite, which was failing pretty miserably. "He's really tall."

"Runs in the family."

For the most part, the drive was quiet save for the mix of screaming heavy metal and groaning country songs playing on the radio. The snow fell faster, and Barkovitch seemed to drift to sleep, his head lolling into Stebbins' lap. The man looked back once or twice, but thankfully, didn't comment.

When they finally reached the outskirts of Kittery in a matter of roughly an hour, the brakes slammed down and Barkovitch jerked awake. "We here?!"

"Yeah, kids, here we are. This is as far as I'll take you. You know, my nephew, he likes boys too. Got a boyfriend called Collie something. Best of luck to you." They thanked him, and the car drove away, the engine humming rhythmically.

Barkovitch and Stebbins looked at each other, and Barkovitch was unable to contain his laughter. "Are you fucking serious? _Parker's_ gay?! With _Abraham?!"_

"Apparently so."

"Well, I sure as fuck didn't see that coming. My brother lives on the edges of town, I wrote his address in here somewhere." He fished around in his sweatshirt pocket for a slip of paper. "Here we go. It isn't a far walk, I don't think." Barkovitch wrapped his arm around Stebbins' shoulders, or at least attempted to with their height difference.

Josh Barkovitch lived in a six-story apartment building. It wasn't particularly big, but it wasn't small either. Barkovitch had to practically punch the buzzer to get it to finally turn to speaker.

"Hello?" The voice that responded to the buzz sounded like he could be the narrator to a kids' show. Probably a pretty fucked up kids' show, but a kids' show nonetheless. If Stebbins hadn't known otherwise, he would never have guessed that Barkovitch and this guy were related.

"Josh, it's Gary."

"Wait, really? Come on in! I haven't seen you in years, dude!" The pair of boys stumbled into the lobby and the elevator ride that followed up to the fourth floor apartment was warm and wet.

The boy standing in front of the elevator was tall, much taller than Barkovitch, and wore a sweater with Harvard plastered across it in white lettering. His skin was lighter than Barkovitch's, and his hair was less bushy and a lot cleaner.

"Gary!" He practically grabbed Barkovitch and pulled him into a hug. "Who'd you bring? And where are Mom and Dad?"  
Barkovitch and Stebbins looked at each other awkwardly. This was most likely going to quite take a lot of explaining.

* * *

**long time no update huh**


	17. Chapter 17

When Josh had settled the two boys onto the couch with blankets and tea and dry, if ill-fitting clothes, he sat down in front of them in an armchair and asked for some explanation.

"Well, see…" Barkovitch started, looking awkwardly down at his drink. "This is Dirk Stebbins. My, uh…boyfriend. Yeah."

"Go on."

"You're not fucking surprised? Angry? Overcome with rage?" Barkovitch looked stunned.

"Why would I be angry and surprised? It's no concern of mine whether you like guys or girls. Honestly, Gary, I'm a sophomore at Harvard. There's a pansexual, genderqueer marine biology student on my basketball team." Barkovitch looked down, blushing. "Continue."

"Well, he's got shitty parents. His dad's…not so nice…and his mom is barely around because they're poor as hell. You can tell this part, Dirky." The pet name had never sounded more comforting or careless than before.

"I…he doesn't treat me very well. And I don't treat myself very well, if you understand what I mean. And it's gotten to be so bad that I considered running away, and, I suppose that's really all there is to it."

"You left out the sappy love story part!" Barkovitch feigned offense. "I hated him at first. He's still a dumbass, but I sure as hell don't hate him anymore. He sorta stayed over at my house a few times when things got bad at his and then we just sorta planned this and we figured that we could…stay with you, I guess?"

Josh blinked. He looked awfully different from Barkovitch, his eyes were a lighter color, almost amber, and he looked like an A student as opposed to a small, angry boy you'd find in a box on the side of the road. "Well. You're my brother, Gary. But why didn't you stay with Mom and Dad?"

"Do you fucking know how they make me feel?! Mom seems to forget that I'm even there and Dad yells at me every time he's even home. He's always out with his buddies at the golf club or some shit! I don't want to stay there!"

"Okay, okay, calm down. You know, they sent me an email saying that you looked a lot happier than you used to and that you made a friend. Is this the friend they were referring to?"

"Probably." Barkovitch drew the blankets tighter around himself and Stebbins, and Stebbins found himself nestling into the crook of Barkovitch's neck.

"And what about school? You can't just skip!"

"Christmas break's in like a week. We won't miss much. We just need some time to chill and sort out Stebbins' family situation or whatever. And you're like, at one of the top universities in the country. You can help us learn what we'd be missing."

"Okay, but how will we explain your absence? And I'll probably be the first person Mom and Dad call to see where you are."

Barkovitch shrugged exasperatedly, disrupting Stebbins from his cuddling position. "Just tell them that I wanted to stay over at your place for awhile and tell them that I needed some space or some shit. Make something up. They'll probably buy it, since they don't give a damn about me anyways."

"Don't say that, Gary. They love you, they're just not so good at expressing it sometimes." Barkovitch rolled his eyes. "But I'm not saying that I won't let you stay here. I've got space if you guys are comfortable with sharing a room."

"We've done it before," Barkovitch said, reddening at the memory of the time when Stebbins had slept over at his house practically uninvited after helping him with his homework and it had been…awkward.

"Alright, then! You guys can share the guest bedroom. My girlfriend slept there, when I had a girlfriend. I go out a lot during the day, since we're already on break. Sometimes I come back here to get something or just to chill during lunch. I'll leave a little money out if there's not enough food in the house and you guys need to go out and get something. I'm pretty lax about rules, but just don't go out individually and…don't do any drugs or alcohol or anything?"

"Once I had a beer and I vomited for a week, I'm not gonna fuckin' try, Josh."

Josh patted him on the back. "Just looking out for your safety, bro. Also, the guy I rented this place from really doesn't like mess. I'll clean before I move to Boston, obviously, but just don't break anything or mess stuff up majorly. Got it?"

"Yeah, sure, whatever you say, Josh."

"Note that I didn't say no sex. You can fuck to your heart's content, just don't do any drugs or get drunk."

"For fuck's sake, Josh, I'm _sixteen!" _Barkovitch's face had flushed a dark red color.

"Never too young, brother dear. Now I'll leave you two to warm up." Josh picked up his mug of tea and started off towards the kitchen, which was connected to the living room by a mere difference of carpeted floor to tiles.

Stebbins repositioned himself so he was back in the crook of Barkovitch's neck. The oversized shirts Josh had handed them were fresh out of the dryer and that combined with the thick blankets made both of them a burrito of warmth.

"You know, this was worth seeing Abraham's uncle in a shitty car and almost freezing our asses off and breaking up." Barkovitch smiled, one of the most genuine ones Stebbins had seen him make.

"Agreed." He wrapped his arms around the other boy's chest and placed a kiss on his mouth.

And for a moment, Stebbins remembered the skinny, lonely boy whose wrists were stained red and whose father hit him and who let his homework flutter out of his binder like paper birds flying east, and wondered where he had disappeared to.

Stebbins decided that he didn't miss him.

* * *

**well here we are kids the ending of paper birds! this was super fun to write and i hope you all enjoyed it as much as i did! man, stebbarkovitch is underrated. but yeah, hooray for my first completed multichapter!**


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